OT?: "Solaris" NYT review
Thornhill
A "science-fiction film lacking action-adventure sequences"?
- What?
No "boyish friskiness, kineticism and pyrotechnics"?
- What??
No "vicarious physical release"?
- WHAT!!???
*ONLY* "cerebral and somber to the end"????
Say it ain't so!
Well, on the positive side, at least it's only 98 minutes long, right?
Thornhill
November 27, 2002
Their Love Will Go On in Outer Space
BY STEPHEN HOLDEN
Whether gazing darkly over the ocean from a captain's perch in "The Perfect
Storm" or contemplating the viscous, shape-shifting reality of a mysterious
planet from a space station in his new movie "Solaris," George Clooney
projects the brooding solipsism of a man's-man encased in a shell of
loneliness. In the Hollywood pantheon of recycled heroes, he suggests a
Clark Gable for the new millennium, without the raised eyebrow and rakish
leer. That space station, the setting for most of "Solaris," is a gleaming,
sterile pod that feels increasingly claustrophobic as this solemn
science-fiction fable prepares to dispense its intriguing riddles. The world
of "Solaris" may be a universe away from the frothy Las Vegas gloss of
"Ocean's Eleven," this star's last collaboration with Steven Soderbergh, who
directed both movies. But Mr. Clooney's guarded insularity injects both
films with steady dark bass notes.
"Solaris" observes its characters in semi-shadow much of the time. Mr.
Clooney's eyes glisten through the gloom like shiny black coals studded into
a craggy twilit landscape.
But a third of the way into the film, Mr. Clooney's shell begins to crack.
As his character, Chris Kelvin, starts to unravel, the grimy rivulets of
guilt and longing leaking out of him lend the movie a palpable subterranean
ache. Chris's tears aren't the warm, cathartic sobs of a grieving Rhett
Butler softened by one too many brandies, but the tremors of a man who
thought he had all the answers suddenly confronting a scary metaphysical
conundrum.
A psychiatrist called upon to investigate the increasingly irrational
behavior of a crew posted at a distant space station named the Prometheus,
Chris continues to mourn the suicide of his wife, Rheya (Natascha McElhone),
years after her death. As he confronts forces that might be described as a
kind of virtual reality emanating from his own mind, his certainty of what
is real and what is not begins to crumble, and a lifetime of stifled doubts
and regrets rears up to haunt him.
"Solaris" was adapted from the Polish science-fiction writer Stanislaw Lem's
1961 novel, which also inspired a 1972 film by the Russian director Andrei
Tarkovsky. The story turns out to be a kind of aesthetic Rorschach for
filmmakers.
In the hands of Mr. Soderbergh, collaborating with the producer James
Cameron (who directed "Titanic"), many of the fussy scientific and
philosophical details of the two previous incarnations have been discarded.
Retooled into a sleek pop fable that doesn't bother to connect all its dots,
the movie aspires to fuse the mystical intellectual gamesmanship of "2001: A
Space Odyssey" with the love-beyond-the-grave romantic schmaltz of
"Titanic," without losing its cool. It's a tricky balancing act that doesn't
quite come off.
Because Mr. Soderbergh is the farthest thing from a pop sentimentalist, the
movie's strain of Kubrickian skepticism dampens any Cameronian romantic
heat. The chill is only accentuated by Cliff Martinez's ethereally
melancholy score of synthesized pulses filtered through strings.
Arriving at the space station, Chris discovers that the mission's commander,
Gibarian (Ulrich Tukur), who summoned him but refused to say what was wrong,
has committed suicide. The two remaining scientists, Snow (Jeremy Davies)
and Gordon (Viola Davis), are exhibiting symptoms of acute paranoia
presumably brought on by their scientific inquiries. Snow is a giggling,
maniacal trickster, while Gordon refuses to leave her quarters. One
tantalizing clue as to what's happening is the realization that the oceanic
planet under examination seems to be reacting to the scientists' presence,
as though it knows it's being observed.
Once he awakens after a troubled sleep to find his dead wife lying beside
him restored to life, Chris finds himself surrendering to the same unnerving
phenomena. The heart of the film is his agonized dialogue with this
flesh-and-blood phantom woman who seems physically real but whose selective
memory suggests that she is only a mental projection of what he remembers of
her.
As the couple rake over their past, we learn that the bitterest bone of
contention between them was Rheya's failure to inform Chris of her
infertility before they were married. Now, in her resurrected state, she
appears weirdly indestructible.
The movie goes out of its way to emphasize that Mr. Clooney's Chris and Ms.
McElhone's Rheya are no futuristic Leo and Kate locked in eternal puppy love
but a sorrowful couple who weathered many battles while married. Her wide
eyes staring hawklike out of her angular mask of a face, Ms. McElhone's
Rheya projects a forbidding sensuality. Even when she becomes emotionally
unstrung, her eruptions have the slightly robotic quality of the android she
might well turn out to be.
As the fable accumulates more layers of ambiguity, it recalls "The Cage,"
the seldom-seen pilot episode of "Star Trek" in which the starship commander
(played by Jeffrey Hunter) is disfigured in battle and imprisoned by a
mentally advanced, but physically depleted tribe of telepathic aliens who
use him for their pleasure. In the episode's ambiguously happy ending, he
and an equally damaged woman end up living in a shared romantic illusion
that becomes their captors' erotic entertainment. Heaven may exist, the
episode suggests, but it's just a manipulated fantasy.
In toying with some of the same ideas, "Solaris" throws in such enigmatic
touches as the appearance of an unsmiling deific child extending its hand to
Chris like Michelangelo's God creating the first man. But "Solaris" is too
coolheaded to make a big fuss over such imagery. The last thing it wants to
do is soothe us with grandiose assurances from the "Touched by an Angel"
playbook.
The movie, which opens nationwide today, is visually handsome in an austere
way. Its space station, which from the outside resembles two interlocking
bicycles, has an interior that suggests an elegant oversize Laundromat with
furniture that reminds you of giant computer keyboards. Solaris itself is a
golden, rainbow-flecked swirl of matter that exerts an increasingly
irresistible gravitational pull.
But once the novelty of the space station has worn off, the movie's
atmosphere begins to feel uncomfortably cramped and stifling. For "Solaris"
is a science-fiction film lacking action-adventure sequences. The absence of
boyish friskiness, kineticism and pyrotechnics makes it a film that offers
no vicarious physical release. Its insistence on remaining cerebral and
somber to the end may be a sign of integrity, but it should cost it dearly
at the box office.
"Solaris" is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). It has sexual
situations and discreetly photographed moments of nudity.
SOLARIS
Directed by Steven Soderbergh; written by Mr. Soderbergh, based on the book
by Stanislaw Lem; director of photography, Peter Andrews; edited by Mary Ann
Bernard; music by Cliff Martinez; production designer, Philip Messina;
produced by James Cameron, Rae Sanchini and Jon Landau; released by 20th
Century Fox. Running time: 98 minutes. This film is rated PG-13.
WITH: George Clooney (Kelvin), Natascha McElhone (Rheya), Viola Davis
(Gordon), Jeremy Davies (Snow) and Ulrich Tukur (Gibarian).
Copyright The New York Times Company | Permissions | Privacy Policy
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/27/movies/27SOLA.html?8iwem=&pagewanted=print
&position=top
Peter Tonguette
disappointing to me. The last time I remember seeing a studio movie this
serious and ambitious it was December of 1998 and Terry Malick was returning
after a 20 year hiatus...
And, frankly, the charge that Soderbergh's film is "cerebral" or "cold"
mystifies me as much as similar charges made against Kubrick's work do.
Peter
Gordon Dahlquist
hoberman's review in the voice is about as positive a review I've ever
seen him give a studio release ... and this from a guy who'd very
familiar with the tarkovsky film. I've yet to see the film, but the fact
that holden's criticism comes down to "Its insistence on remaining
cerebral and somber to the end may be a sign of integrity, but it should
cost it dearly at the box office" is pretty pathetic.
on the other hand, I'll happily direct you to armond white's review, where
he finds that soderberghc's "indie" sensibility is a poor cousin to the
"movie brat" generation of compassionate genre-lovers, and specifically
faults solaris for failing to come up to the high levels of achievement
established by that trio of pauline's darlings, spielberg, de palma and
hill, in their recent masterworks, minority report, mission to mars, and
supernova. really. mission to mars.
http://www.nypress.com/15/48/film/film2.cfm
Peter Tonguette
>hoberman's review in the voice is about as positive a review I've ever
>seen him give a studio release ... and this from a guy who'd very
>familiar with the tarkovsky film. I've yet to see the film, but the fact
>that holden's criticism comes down to "Its insistence on remaining
>cerebral and somber to the end may be a sign of integrity, but it should
>cost it dearly at the box office" is pretty pathetic.
I saw the film at a press screening on Thursday and I can report that, locally,
the film is inspiring just as divisive personal responses. I am one of maybe
three people who absolutely love the film; on the other side of the spectrum,
the lead critic at our main daily paper gave it two stars. This sort of
response really does remind me of how TTRL was received four years ago.
But "Solaris" is a major, major achievement, in my opinion. I'll look forward
to your thoughts on it - it has SS reaching for the brass ring in a way he
never has before and, amazingly, succeeding. Soderbergh's extremely prolific
experimentation over the past four years - six films in wildly different modes,
genres, sizes - has paid off with a film as fully realized, and personal, as
anything he's ever done. or any American film this year.
I'll ignore your hopeless attempts to turn me into an Armond White basher,
Gordon. :)
Peter
Gorn Captain
is said in the review, not to mention getting the plot points of same all mixed
up) was also percieved as "cold" and "cerebral" by NBC. I'm seeing a pattern
here. ;)
Padraig L Henry
wrote:
>Holden's review and the reception of the film in general has been pretty
>disappointing to me.
That's usually a very good sign, Peter; seems like a very promising -
though, as previously argued, vainly Tarkovsky-derivative - film, then
...
>The last time I remember seeing a studio movie this
>serious and ambitious it was December of 1998 and Terry Malick was returning
>after a 20 year hiatus...
>
>And, frankly, the charge that Soderbergh's film is "cerebral" or "cold"
>mystifies me as much as similar charges made against Kubrick's work do.
But when Spielberg undertakes a deeply flawed and clueless attempt at
being "cerebral" and "cold" (as in AI), the critical mainstream
[especially the Armond Whites] declare him a "genius"!!!!
Same old story ...
Padraig
... have you seen Ozon's Eight Women yet? Chabrol and Malle meet
Altman's Gosford Park by way of a la-la-la Dennis Potter.
Peter Tonguette
>>Holden's review and the reception of the film in general has been pretty
>>disappointing to me.
>
>That's usually a very good sign, Peter; seems like a very promising -
>though, as previously argued, vainly Tarkovsky-derivative - film, then
>...
Just to show how off-target expectations can be, I predicted in my review of
"Full Frontal" that this film would be warmly received. But I think I was
really expecting a more conventional, "Hollywood" version of a film
masterpiece, despite Soderbergh's track record. What we got is actually
something that can be mentioned in the same breath as the Tarkovsky original,
in my opinion. Thus, critical confoundment instead of critical accolades.
>>The last time I remember seeing a studio movie this
>>serious and ambitious it was December of 1998 and Terry Malick was returning
>>after a 20 year hiatus...
>>
>>And, frankly, the charge that Soderbergh's film is "cerebral" or "cold"
>>mystifies me as much as similar charges made against Kubrick's work do.
>
>But when Spielberg undertakes a deeply flawed and clueless attempt at
>being "cerebral" and "cold" (as in AI), the critical mainstream
>[especially the Armond Whites] declare him a "genius"!!!!
>
>Same old story ...
>
>Padraig
>... have you seen Ozon's Eight Women yet? Chabrol and Malle meet
>Altman's Gosford Park by way of a la-la-la Dennis Potter.
There was a press screening of this here (it has yet to actually open in
central Ohio - big surprise), but I missed it unfortunately. Among recent
releases, though, I can heartily recommend the latest Manoel de Oliveria, "I'm
Going Home," and Todd Haynes' "Far From Heaven." It's one helluva good year
for film.
Peter
Winston Castro
Friday evening at 8:30pm, US Central Time, TCM (Turner Classic
Movies) is showing the original Solaris.
Get those VCR tapes ready people!
Matthew Dickinson
> http://www.nypress.com/15/48/film/film2.cfm
>
hey, peter, that page also has a review of altman's Images
matthew
Mike Jackson
at7000...@hotmail.com wrote on 11/27/02 8:00 PM:
Bless you for the heads up.
I've been so busy that probably would have went right by me...
--
Mike Jackson
Mental Pictures Photography & Design
http://www.mental-pictures.com/
Phone/Fax: 228-696-2702 Cell: 228-918-4596
Josh
>what
>is said in the review, not to mention getting the plot points of same all
>mixed
>up) was also percieved as "cold" and "cerebral" by NBC. I'm seeing a pattern
>here. ;)
The reviewer didn't even get the episode right! In the original pilot "The
Cage," Captain Pike (Jeffrey Hunter) visited this planet to try to rescue a
crew that had crashed there; it turns out there was only one survivor. The
natives of the planet trap Pike and try to persuade him to marry the girl,
using their powerful brains to give him the illusion of whatever he wants - or
at least, what they think he wants. In the end, though, he overcomes their
power by realizing its all an illusion, and discovers that the girl is not
really the beautiful young temptress, but horribly disfigured from the crash,
and alone. Thus, problem solved, crew of the Enterprise saved, and Capt. Pike
agrees to allow the aliens to give the girl the illusion of Pike staying
behind.
Now, what the reviewer was referring to was "The Menagerie," a two-part episode
that Gene Roddenberry did in the first season to get "The Cage" on air. It is
there that we see Capt. Pike has been horribly injured in an accident, unable
to express himself other than the use of flashing lights, one which signals a
"yes" and one a "no". Capt. Kirk and Spock have come to pay their respects to
Pike, but Spock has other ideas; he kidnaps Pike using the Enterprise, and sets
course for that alien planet, Talos IV. Capt. Kirk and the starfleet admiral
chase the Enterprise in a shuttlecraft and catch up with it. Spock has locked
the controls into going to Talos IV, despite it being a forbidden planet. He
is brought down for court martial as the shit travels to this planet, and in
his defense, conveniently offers pretty much the entire episode of "The Cage"
which was preserved in the ship's library, apparently by invisible cameramen
following Capt. Pike through his capture. (OK, it's science fiction, I can
suspend that much disbelief.) At the end of the episode, it is revealed that
all Spock wants to do is bring his former captain to that planet, where the
powerful aliens can give Pike the illusion and feeling of comfort with the
girl, allowing him to forget his injuries and function as if he were not
severely wounded. And thus, having saved Capt. Pike and forgiving Spock for
breaking every rule in the book, Capt. Kirk takes the Enterprise off to another
mission. (Sounds a bit like Star Trek III, if you ask me.)
Anyhow... I've obviously watched too much TV, but it would be nice if reviewers
could get their references right.
Josh
VertigoLand http://members.aol.com/VertigoMan
Me (the online diary) http://members.aol.com/vertigoman/me
CDR Trading:
http://members.aol.com/vertigoman/me/bootlist.html
eyeball kid
Last Sunday the NYT had an article on the film. Part of it said:
But Mr. Cameron's interest in the project languished, and when Mr.
Soderbergh approached him in 1999, Mr. Cameron gave Mr. Soderbergh his
head to develop the material as he wished. In his role as producer,
Mr. Cameron was content to serve as Mr. Soderbergh's sounding board
through endless conversations and many script revisions.
He added that he had no plans to make his own version of "Solaris,"
but that's not quite the end of it. "You may yet see my ideas," he
said cheerfully. "My version would probably have been much, much
further afield. I had so many ideas that they may reappear through the
cracks of other projects."
Tarkovsky's "Solaris" was called the Russian answer to Stanley
Kubrick's "2001." Mr. Soderbergh's may be a more plausible modern-day
candidate. "I always thought of the planet as the equivalent of the
monolith," he said. "I happen to think that `2001' is one of the most
important pieces of art created by an American filmmaker. No one who
has seen it and makes films can escape its influence."
mike
dc
"That sounds intriguing, and one can see why the concept grabbed Soderbergh.
(It also grabbed the late Soviet director Andrei Tarkovsky, who in 1972 made
an equally inert "Solaris" from Stanislaw Lem's novel of the same name.) But
while the story might at least seem to suggest an emotional movie about
life, death, identity, grief, joy and obsession, "Solaris" feels as though
it were filmed in a meat locker. It gives a cold-as-Kubrick treatment to
touchy-feely subject matter and keeps the audience at a distance.
So we get a love story, but a love story made up either of tortured
confrontations, seen in flashback, or long conversations in space."
Whoops this guy thinks its as bad a Kubrick film....so it must be good, but
whats with this 99 minute running time?
dc
Gorn Captain
The "invisible cameramen" were supposed to be the Talosians themselves. The images
were being "broadcast" from the planet itself to the Enterprise.
Jan
> Last Sunday the NYT had an article on the film. Part of it said:
[...]
> Tarkovsky's "Solaris" was called the Russian answer to Stanley
> Kubrick's "2001."
It's like an infection: one person says it and then there is no
stopping this nonsense. Vincent Bugliosi whose well-thought-out rants
I simply adore said people usually see what they expect to see, not
what's actually out there. It just *seems* like such an obvious idea
that Tarkovsky's "Solaris" should be the Russian answer to "2001".
Well - it wasn't. Tarkovsky had not even seen "2001" until mid way
through the production of his "Solaris". Having seen it, both
Tarkovsky and his cameraman (Vadim Yusov) decided not to change
anything in their film as they both disliked "2001" for at least two
reasons:
1. What "2001" was saying re. the genesis of man
2. The way technology was shown in the film - "as a museum exhibit"
instead of - as Tarkovsky considered proper - "matter-of-factly".
AFAIK the line about "Soviet answer to '2001'" was invented by the
original US distributor of "Solaris" - the same one who cut 1 hour
from it.
I saw Soderbergh's film yesterday and thought it was interesting
except the ending ruined it, I think. At best, it's obscure. Obscure
as in: the director didn't really have any idea either. At worst, it's
a happy end. I'll sleep on it.
Jan Bielawski
Wordsmith
> > Holden's review and the reception of the film in general has been pretty
> > disappointing to me. The last time I remember seeing a studio movie this
> > serious and ambitious it was December of 1998 and Terry Malick was returning
> > after a 20 year hiatus...
> >
> > And, frankly, the charge that Soderbergh's film is "cerebral" or "cold"
> > mystifies me as much as similar charges made against Kubrick's work do.
> >
> > Peter
>
> Last Sunday the NYT had an article on the film. Part of it said:
>
> But Mr. Cameron's interest in the project languished, and when Mr.
> Soderbergh approached him in 1999, Mr. Cameron gave Mr. Soderbergh his
> head to develop the material as he wished. In his role as producer,
> Mr. Cameron was content to serve as Mr. Soderbergh's sounding board
> through endless conversations and many script revisions.
I'm not shocked Cameron grew weary of it. *Solaris* doesn't sound like his
territory anyway.
> He added that he had no plans to make his own version of "Solaris,"
> but that's not quite the end of it. "You may yet see my ideas," he
> said cheerfully. "My version would probably have been much, much
> further afield. I had so many ideas that they may reappear through the
> cracks of other projects."
"Much, much further afield" indeed. Explosions every three minutes, etc.
> Tarkovsky's "Solaris" was called the Russian answer to Stanley
> Kubrick's "2001." Mr. Soderbergh's may be a more plausible modern-day
> candidate. "I always thought of the planet as the equivalent of the
> monolith," he said. "I happen to think that `2001' is one of the most
> important pieces of art created by an American filmmaker. No one who
> has seen it and makes films can escape its influence."
I'm mulling over whether to see it or not. I haven't even screened the
original yet.
Wordsmith :)
> mike
dc
Wordsmith :)
> mike<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
If one has not seen Tarkovsky's version it is a good film that one would
suggest lots of Kubrick influence. It is a visually good film, not as
austere and bizarre as the original film, but more enjoyable, it is just
very limited due to the story itself which could be boiled down to a 1/2
hour Twilight Zone episode. People were laughing in the theater ---at things
that weren't at all funny---it will probably be ignored by the masses.
I think Soderberg should have rewritten it, given it some meat on the bone
for this century--he should have sold out on this one and made it more
hollywoody--cause as it stands it just doens't have a whole lot of impact
either as a Sci fi or as a obscure cosmic film.
dc
Padraig L Henry
>AFAIK the line about "Soviet answer to '2001'" was invented by the
>original US distributor of "Solaris" - the same one who cut 1 hour
>from it.
Yes, interesting how advertising slogans become the "historical
record" in the land of advertising ...
Padraig
Padraig L Henry
>
>I think Soderberg should have rewritten it, given it some meat on the bone
>for this century--he should have sold out on this one and made it more
>hollywoody--cause as it stands it just doens't have a whole lot of impact
>either as a Sci fi or as a obscure cosmic film.
Not having seen the film yet, I can't comment on its content, but your
sentiments here are disturbingly gross. If the film is as indicated in
numerous reviews, I'm delighted Soderbergh hasn't sold out on this one
to a fucked-up Hollywood ...
Padraig
Padraig L Henry
wrote:
>Padraig L Henry wrote:
>
>>>Holden's review and the reception of the film in general has been pretty
>>>disappointing to me.
>>
>>That's usually a very good sign, Peter; seems like a very promising -
>>though, as previously argued, vainly Tarkovsky-derivative - film, then
>>...
>
>Just to show how off-target expectations can be, I predicted in my review of
>"Full Frontal" that this film would be warmly received. But I think I was
>really expecting a more conventional, "Hollywood" version of a film
>masterpiece, despite Soderbergh's track record. What we got is actually
>something that can be mentioned in the same breath as the Tarkovsky original,
>in my opinion. Thus, critical confoundment instead of critical accolades.
Yes, the reception of EWS in 1999 also comes to mind. And fast-sell,
seductively vacuous theatrical trailers don't help here either; some
of the best films I've seen over the past few years all had
false-expectation lousy trailers ... and those for Soderbergh's
Solaris and Haynes' Far From Heaven don't help matters either. Die
Another Day, die another trailer ...
Mind you, one thing they do achieve is to give a whole new meaning to
"trailer trash" :-)
>>>The last time I remember seeing a studio movie this
>>>serious and ambitious it was December of 1998 and Terry Malick was returning
>>>after a 20 year hiatus...
>>>
>>>And, frankly, the charge that Soderbergh's film is "cerebral" or "cold"
>>>mystifies me as much as similar charges made against Kubrick's work do.
>>
>>But when Spielberg undertakes a deeply flawed and clueless attempt at
>>being "cerebral" and "cold" (as in AI), the critical mainstream
>>[especially the Armond Whites] declare him a "genius"!!!!
>>
>>Same old story ...
>>
>>Padraig
>>... have you seen Ozon's Eight Women yet? Chabrol and Malle meet
>>Altman's Gosford Park by way of a la-la-la Dennis Potter.
>
>There was a press screening of this here (it has yet to actually open in
>central Ohio - big surprise), but I missed it unfortunately. Among recent
>releases, though, I can heartily recommend the latest Manoel de Oliveria, "I'm
>Going Home," and Todd Haynes' "Far From Heaven." It's one helluva good year
>for film.
Interesting you should mention Haynes's latest film here. Both films,
Ozon's and Haynes', are distinct homages to the 1950s world of Douglas
Sirk, the latter more explicitly to All That Heaven Allows, the former
by being shot in the lush Technicolour style of a 1950s Sirk
melodrama.
Padraig
DLew022
dissapointed. I *appreciate* what Soderberg has done and the fillm looks GREAT.
When I say I appreciate him, it's along the same lines as PT Anderson/"Punch
Drunk Love." I like how these guys are taking mainstream actors and putting
them in these complex art films. I like watching the masses squirm. BUT....
Soderbergs "Solaris" just didn't give me much to think about. I think Jan made
a good point in an earlier post in that it seemed like Soderberg didn't really
know what he was trying to say and just sort of left it at that. That was how I
interpreted what Jan wrote anyway :D
I guess what I'm saying is...I didn't hate this film but I doubt I'll go back
and watch it again and really try and see what Soderberg was saying. Unlike
say..."2001" or "Vertigo"....my interest isn't piqued. I may go back and watch
"Full Frontal" a few more times as it intrigued me....but i disliked it.
I'm yammering on and not making my point very well here.... I think I'm trying
to say....there wasn't enough "in" Solaris to get me thinking. "Vanilla Sky"
gave me more to ponder than "Solaris." However, Clooney was terrific and the
film is visually stunning. Soderberg's choice of film stock is fascinating.
don
p.s. How much longer will Jeremy Davies be hired to be the bumbling, mumbling
sissy. The guy is the SAME in every film.
dc
Padraig<<<<<<<<<<<
He just made a weak film by being too true to the original. Its like the
original, with an hour and a half cut out, he turned it into a quickie TV
drama made for PBS.
dc
Greg Lowry
"DLew022" <dle...@aol.com> wrote:
I think Jeremy was doing Dennis Hopper in Apocalypse Now. BTW, I loved every
frame of Solaris.
--
PT Caffey
> If one has not seen Tarkovsky's version it is a good film that one would
> suggest lots of Kubrick influence. It is a visually good film, not as
> austere and bizarre as the original film, but more enjoyable, it is just
> very limited due to the story itself which could be boiled down to a 1/2
> hour Twilight Zone episode.
I agree. Soderberg's Solaris is terrific visually and, I think,
dramatically. But his IS the "boiled down" version. >SPOILER< In
any other sf film, can you imagine seeing a scene in which the
characters discuss, in detail, the "doohickey field destruction ray"
and then NOT see the device in action? Very economical!
> People were laughing in the theater ---at things
> that weren't at all funny---it will probably be ignored by the masses.
>
People tend to laugh when they're confused, anxious or confronted with
lingering shots of George Clooney's ass, which SHOULD be ignored by
the masses.
> I think Soderberg should have rewritten it, given it some meat on the bone
> for this century--he should have sold out on this one and made it more
> hollywoody--cause as it stands it just doens't have a whole lot of impact
> either as a Sci fi or as a obscure cosmic film.
>
> dc
Given that "hollywoody" means dreadful and unwatchable, I'm at a loss
to understand why you believe a more "hollywoody" Solaris would have
greater impact. Solaris is a very good sf film in a minor key. With
such films, the best we can hope for is a small financial disaster;
otherwise, we won't see another one for some time.
PT Caffey
dc
> for this century--he should have sold out on this one and made it more
> hollywoody--cause as it stands it just doens't have a whole lot of impact
> either as a Sci fi or as a obscure cosmic film.
>
> dc
Given that "hollywoody" means dreadful and unwatchable, I'm at a loss
to understand why you believe a more "hollywoody" Solaris would have
greater impact. Solaris is a very good sf film in a minor key. With
such films, the best we can hope for is a small financial disaster;
otherwise, we won't see another one for some time.
PT Caffey<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
I guess what I was saying was that Solaris to me was too bland, I was hoping
for something more cosmic and oriignal---and I would have preferred a
Hollywoody film to this restrained TV special.
dc
Peter Tonguette
>Yes, the reception of EWS in 1999 also comes to mind. And fast-sell,
>seductively vacuous theatrical trailers don't help here either; some
>of the best films I've seen over the past few years all had
>false-expectation lousy trailers ... and those for Soderbergh's
>Solaris and Haynes' Far From Heaven don't help matters either. Die
>Another Day, die another trailer ...
>
>Mind you, one thing they do achieve is to give a whole new meaning to
>"trailer trash" :-)
In this context, what are we to expect from Scorsese's "Gangs of New York"? :)
But you're absolutely right. A friend of mine who loves Soderbergh's "Solaris"
was actually looking forward to it >until< he saw the trailer. Of course, it
didn't matter once he saw the film, but I think the marketing campaign made the
film actually off-putting for the audience who would probably best respond to
the movie, while failing to draw in the "masses." A lose-lose situation. The
other recent instance of this, for me, was the trailer for "Gosford Park." My
expectations were seriously lowered, as the trailer made the film look like a
minor Altman riff on Agatha Christie instead of the devastating class critique
that it was.
I guess all of these films fall into the categories of "hard sells"... even the
Kubrick-cut trailer for "Full Metal Jacket" is seriously disappointing and I
wonder what I would have made of it back in 1987...
I can heartily recommend the latest Manoel de Oliveria,
>"I'm
>>Going Home," and Todd Haynes' "Far From Heaven." It's one helluva good
>year
>>for film.
>
>Interesting you should mention Haynes's latest film here. Both films,
>Ozon's and Haynes', are distinct homages to the 1950s world of Douglas
>Sirk, the latter more explicitly to All That Heaven Allows, the former
>by being shot in the lush Technicolour style of a 1950s Sirk
>melodrama.
This has me intrigued about "8 Women" then... I'll have to catch up with it on
video. Ozon's "Under the Sand" was a fine film, featuring a knockout
performance by Charlotte Rampling. I might say here that if Julianne Moore
doesn't win an Oscar for "Far From Heaven," I'm moving to France.
Peter
mark de rozario
> If one has not seen Tarkovsky's version it is a good film that one would
> suggest lots of Kubrick influence. It is a visually good film, not as
> austere and bizarre as the original film, but more enjoyable, it is just
> very limited due to the story itself which could be boiled down to a 1/2
> hour Twilight Zone episode.
I haven't seen Soderberg's Solaris, and I'm no fan of Soderberg, but I
must protest on behalf of Lem's original novel, whose story could
certainly not be 'boiled down' into a 1/2 hour Twilight Zone ep.
Desire and the uncomfortable messages it communicates about us;
whether it is possible to communicate with the genuinely alien, and
what that would entail, and mean; the power of the unconscious versus
the attempt to rationalize; the enigmas of the cosmos. All of these
fall within the compass of Lem's remarkable novel. There is much in
the film that didn't make it into Tarkovsky's film, never mind
Soderberg's.
<snip>
> I think Soderberg should have rewritten it,
Or perhaps returned to the Lem source-novel?
>given it some meat on the bone
> for this century--he should have sold out on this one and made it more
> hollywoody--
But what would have been the point in that? Why not make another film
altogether rather than turn out Sphere 2 or Event Horizon: the Sequel?
dc
>
> If one has not seen Tarkovsky's version it is a good film that one would
> suggest lots of Kubrick influence. It is a visually good film, not as
> austere and bizarre as the original film, but more enjoyable, it is just
> very limited due to the story itself which could be boiled down to a 1/2
> hour Twilight Zone episode.
I haven't seen Soderberg's Solaris, and I'm no fan of Soderberg, but I
must protest on behalf of Lem's original novel, whose story could
certainly not be 'boiled down' into a 1/2 hour Twilight Zone ep.
Desire and the uncomfortable messages it communicates about us;
whether it is possible to communicate with the genuinely alien, and
what that would entail, and mean; the power of the unconscious versus
the attempt to rationalize; the enigmas of the cosmos. All of these
fall within the compass of Lem's remarkable novel. There is much in
the film that didn't make it into Tarkovsky's film, never mind
Soderberg's.<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
I bought the book years ago and never got around to reading it. My comments
above are a bit sarcastic--maily because Solaris was ok but bascially a big
disappointment. I would rather it was a mindless scifi then what it
was......but of course i would prefer it to have been great. I expected too
much.
<snip>
> I think Soderberg should have rewritten it,
Or perhaps returned to the Lem source-novel?
>given it some meat on the bone
> for this century--he should have sold out on this one and made it more
> hollywoody--
But what would have been the point in that? Why not make another film
altogether rather than turn out Sphere 2 or Event Horizon: the
Sequel?<<<<<<<<
Thoe were pathetic movies. But here we had the potential of Cameron and
Soderberg coming up with a Big original sci fi film...and rediujng the
original film and not outdoing it in thei day and age is ridiculous.
dc
mark de rozario
> "dc" <dc...@ojai.net>
> the film that didn't make it into Tarkovsky's film, never mind
> Soderberg's.
Correction: that should obviously have read 'there is much in the novel'....
Sorry....
Josh
>homework. ;)
>The "invisible cameramen" were supposed to be the Talosians themselves. The
>images
>were being "broadcast" from the planet itself to the Enterprise.
Been too long since I've seen it.. unfortunately, Paramount insists on
releasing the DVDs with only two episodes on each, even though they could fit
at least four on one, and I just can't afford to buy the whole series. Wish
they would release them season by season like they've been with Next Gen.
Josh
Me (cool stuff) http://members.aol.com/vertigoman/me
CDR Trading:
http://members.aol.com/vertigoman/me/bootlist.html
Josh
>I simply adore said people usually see what they expect to see, not
>what's actually out there.
Truer words were never spoken. Same thing that happened when Eyes Wide Shut
came out, and people who saw it (some critics even) said it sucked because
there wasn't graphic sex in it. Well, who said there would be? Not anyone
involved in the film. And, I'll take it one step further - the Rolling Stone
review of Solaris keeps all of the original character names and spellings that
were in the Russian film, so did the reviewer even bother to see Soderbergh's
movie?
Josh
though. The first teaser trailer, which came out over the summer, which showed
only the planet and some creepy text implied that it would be a horror/sci-fi
combo along the lines of Alien. And then the TV ads are showing only the
flashback scenes with the couple embracing, which is what's on the poster.
They were obviously trying to get the sci-fi geeks, the horror film buffs, the
romance lovers, and the rest of the general public in to see the movie.
Instead, you had the sci-fi people going "Yeah, they say it's a sci-fi movie,
but it looks like a dumb love story - there's not even a spacesuit in the
commercial!" and then you had the romance people going "Yeah, I can see they're
kissing, but they're gonna be in outerspace and it's gonna be all weird and
technical and shit." And the rest of the public said "Let's see Harry Potter!"
The way Fox put it out there, it didn't stand a chance. I went to see it the
night it opened, and the evening showing at my local theatre was sold out. I
was impressed, I thought that meant it was going to be doing great - I went
back home, checked the paper, and went to see it at another theatre about
twenty minutes from my house - and it was empty. And I kinda knew from that
point on that whenever the grosses came in, they weren't gonna be good.
Fortunately for the studio and all those involved, it only cost $49 mil to
make. It's possible they spent more on promoting it. A good home video/DVD
release may give it a second life, which it certainly deserves.
mark de rozario
> dc" <dc...@ojai.net>
<snip>
>
> I bought the book years ago and never got around to reading it.
Do read it, it's well worth the effort.
> My comments
> above are a bit sarcastic--maily because Solaris was ok but bascially a big
> disappointment.
i can't comment, having not seen Soderberg's film yet, but I don't
hold out much hope after what you and others have said; Soderberg has
always struck me as the opposite of an auteur, every film different,
no consistent vision ---- and he seems at his worst when trying to be
intellectual (cf the appalling Kafka, which spectaculary missed the
point).
>I would rather it was a mindless scifi then what it
> was......
>but of course i would prefer it to have been great. I expected too
> much.
>
> <snip>
>
> > I think Soderberg should have rewritten it,
>
> Or perhaps returned to the Lem source-novel?
>
> >given it some meat on the bone
> > for this century--he should have sold out on this one and made it more
> > hollywoody--
>
> But what would have been the point in that? Why not make another film
> altogether rather than turn out Sphere 2 or Event Horizon: the
> Sequel?<<<<<<<<
>
> Thoe were pathetic movies. But here we had the potential of Cameron and
> Soderberg coming up with a Big original sci fi film...and rediujng the
> original film and not outdoing it in thei day and age is ridiculous.
>
Yeh, I agree they were pathetic movies, that was my point; but they
were also, in effect, 'Hollywoody' versions of Solaris. That's about
as good as it's gonna get for a Hollywood take on Solaris' themes.
BTW, do you really think that Cameron and Soderberg could 'outdo'
Tarkovsky? Come to think of it, could anyone, let alone that pair? I
don't know what you mean by 'this day and age' either: it strikes me
that the seventies were an unbelievably rich period for a cinema and
that to expect any film produced in today's dead and empty American
film culture to 'outdo' something produced then is to court
disappointment. Not that any of this is an excuse for simply rehashing
Tarkovsky, if that's what Soderberg has done. Better not to have
bothered at all.
dc
Tarkovsky?<<<<<<<<<<<
They certainly have the resources to have done anything they had wanted with
the film. They didn't sell out but they also didn't try to make a stab at a
cosmic work of art either. I liked Tarkovsky's Solaris, but mostly for the
bizarre photography.
>>>>>Come to think of it, could anyone, let alone that pair? I
don't know what you mean by 'this day and age' either: it strikes me
that the seventies were an unbelievably rich period for a cinema and
that to expect any film produced in today's dead and empty American
film culture to 'outdo' something produced then is to court
disappointment. <<<<<<<<<<<<
I mean that in "this day and age," the technical possibilities are
incredible--the greater CGI possibilities and they just didn't take
advantage of it. For instance the scenes of the planet in the original film
are a bit crude special effect and in this new one the planet scenes are
better---but not much. It seems they were trying to be to true to the
original, which to me ended up bland---like a severely cut down version of
the original. Its probably a much better film if one has not seen the
original or read the novel---but still it is such a "little," film for 47
million.
>>>Not that any of this is an excuse for simply rehashing
Tarkovsky, if that's what Soderberg has done. Better not to have
bothered at all.<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
exactly-----either make a original version full blown using today's tech,
and give it new twists or forget it. Thats why I left feeling like I had
just seen a restrained TV adaptation of the original film. Its not a
terrible film like Sphere or Event Horizon--not at all--but it totally does
not live up to the potential. It is like someone redoing 2001 and trying to
make it accessible to people and much shorter so the masses don't get
bored.....WHY would one do that?
dc
Matthew Dickinson
> I guess all of these films fall into the categories of "hard sells"... even the
> Kubrick-cut trailer for "Full Metal Jacket" is seriously disappointing and I
> wonder what I would have made of it back in 1987...
>
Really? That's one of my favorite trailers. It's a small, perfected
work of art in itself. It has a wonderful stark, spare, tough, raw,
understated and, yeah, beautiful quality to it, just like the movie. I
like the way it flows and moves... (maybe it's strange I've watched it
so many times?) I like how dry and flat Joker's Ann Margret (sp) joke
falls. And I like that it leaves the entire boot camp section a
surprise and shock for first time viewers. And Vivian's music works
wonderfully. I suppose the "getting butts in the seats" factor is not
so good, but I think if he made it more exciting and alluring it would
have been untrue to the movie.
Matthew
Matthew Dickinson
It's his most important work. He's tried really hard with this one.
But I don't think he's very talented at anything. I think he kind of
knows this, too.
Some people have said this film should be applauded just because it's
so rare for a science fiction film to be serious, profound,
philosophical, intellectual, etc. But I always think works of art
should be judged in comparison to the entire world's art history and
not just their relative value to what else is out that week or month.
I don't think this film would be receiving as nearly as rave of
reviews if the dead wife wasn't so beautiful and unusual looking.
I never like Soderbergh's photography and I do not see why it
continually gets such high praise. If it was photographed by an
unknown person it wouldn't get much praise. I think the film looks a
little better in the trailer before many of the scenes were drained of
their color and vivacity by Soderbergh's computers. There's not a
single image in this film that's as good as just about any in
Tarkovsky's version. I guess my favorite image was the diagonal
backwards tracking shot of Clooney walking through a crowd on Earth.
I don't really know how to articulate this, but Americans have such a
terrible culture or lack thereof. Few people develop much character
and complexity these days. Even a mere 30 years ago things were
dramatically different. Nowadays everyone grows up to be very bland,
simple and generic and that means whatever artists we produce will
also be bland and simple and generic, as well as the actors they use
and the characters these actors play. And this shows in this new
version of Solaris. If it was made 30 years ago it would be richer and
deeper and more complex, and with stronger characters, not just
because the art culture was better then but because the nation's
culture as a whole was better.
People should stop comparing both versions of Solaris to 2001. About
the only thing they have in common is that they both take place in
outer space.
I've seen the film twice now but not much of it sticks in my memory.
Isn't that always a bad sign?
The film sort of... kind of... strives for spiritual heights...
perhaps it reaches them to a degree in its ending, but it's nowhere
close to what Tarkovsky achieved in all of his movies, if these two
should be compared.
The scientific concepts in the film are glossed over and taken for
granted as if to say that American audiences don't need to hear much
scientific explanation in order to believe that such implausible
things have scientific and rational grounding. You certainly don't
find this in Tarkovsky's version: the science in that is examined,
questioned, and made evident that it cannot explain everything.
The best thing this movie has going for it is the experience of the
"uncanny" which is does enjoyably enough, though not as great as
Tarkovsky's version or The Shining or Ugetsu or even a good episode of
Unsolved Mysteries. I'm talking about what Freud talks about in his
essay on the subject:
http://www.westga.edu/~pmorgan/gothic/freud_uncanny.html. "Many people
experience the feeling [of the uncanny] in the highest degree in
relation to death and dead bodies, to the return of the dead, and to
spirits and ghosts...."
Regarding the ending... I don't think one should surrender their life
to a blatant illusion even if it brings great happiness, especially
when knowing death is in store for them in doing so. This meaningless
and sick philosophical mood that only our subjective reality matters
and there is no objective or spiritual reality to believe in... is
becoming increasingly popular and that bothers the hell out of me.
(Vanilla Sky, Fight Club, A Beautiful Mind, American Beauty and others
I can't think of off the top of my head are similar in this regard,
but that's just the movies...) I mean shouldn't I be disturbed when
the two main characters no longer care whether they're dead or alive,
nor whether they're going to die soon? Is that how I'm supposed to
feel? Some people say it's a happy ending so I am confused...
Matthew
Jan
> Oh, no!!
The best review I've seen so far is:
http://www.chiafilm.com/solaris.html
It caught two of my major complaints about the film much better than
I'd able to articulate it: the dreadful Hollywood mating dance and the
ending designed to foster pointless discussions about irrelevancies.
Jan Bielawski
dutch_angle
> > wonder what I would have made of it back in 1987...
> >
>
> Really? That's one of my favorite trailers. It's a small, perfected
> work of art in itself. It has a wonderful stark, spare, tough, raw,
> understated and, yeah, beautiful quality to it, just like the movie. I
> like the way it flows and moves... (maybe it's strange I've watched it
> so many times?) I like how dry and flat Joker's Ann Margret (sp) joke
> falls. And I like that it leaves the entire boot camp section a
> surprise and shock for first time viewers. And Vivian's music works
> wonderfully. I suppose the "getting butts in the seats" factor is not
> so good, but I think if he made it more exciting and alluring it would
> have been untrue to the movie.
Totally agree.
The trailer for The Shining is also a masterpiece.
And EWS teaser; that was very very funny and brave, if you consider
the world's expectations; a masterful choice.
These are so much better than the trailers for both Gosford Park
(Rules of the Game Meets Hercule Poirot) and Solaris (Always Meets The
Sixth Sense Meets Sphere). Although the "social critique" of Gosford
Park was rather 2D, thin and predictable, I enjoyed the ensemble.
Solaris was just the extended trailer...
I also like this trailer:
http://www.apple.com/trailers/miramax/comedian.html
d.a.
Leonard F. Wheat
> Oh, no!!
Calling Steven Soderbergh's film version of Stanislaw Lem's
Solaris disappointing would understate the point. The truth is, the
movie is awful. Lem's novel had a science fiction emphasis that
revolved around an intelligent, living "sentient ocean" on the planet
Solaris. Solaris was in another solar system, one with two suns. The
novel's focus was on how man would react to an intelligent being that
is not anthropomorphic and whose nature and behavior man can't
comprehend. A romantic subplot served the main plot by illustrating a
facet of the ocean's behavior--the ocean's own reaction to humans that
it, in turn, couldn't comprehend. That reaction was the ocean's acts
of creating physical replicas ("visitors") of things it perceived in
the minds of the humans. The plot's main replica was an active,
intelligent, self-aware copy of the hero's (Kris Kelvin's) dead wife,
who had committed suicide ten years earlier.
Andrei Tarkovsky's 1972 film version of Solaris downplayed (but kept)
the science fiction, emphasized the love story and the related
religio-philosophical idea that love heals, and created a second
subplot involving estrangement and reconciliation between Kelvin and
his father. The new subplot required a prologue, which had
considerable material not in the novel. This prologue was the
foundation for a plot twist at the end.
Lem was appalled by the liberties Tarkovsky had taken with the
novel. According to Lem, Tarkovsky "didn't make Solaris at all, he
made Crime and Punishment." The crime is Kelvin's failure to
recognize and thwart his wife's suicidal impulses; the punishment is
agonizing pangs of conscience. Lem was also turned off by the film's
visually clever but substantively corrupt ending, which he called
"just totally awful." This ending, besides reintroducing Kelvin's
father, transforms an uncomprehending ocean into its antithesis: an
entity that is comprehending, sympathetic, and supposedly helpful.
Lem: "My Kelvin decides to stay on the planet without any hope
whatsoever, while Tarkovsky created an image . . . [that is] just some
emotional sauce."
Steven Soderbergh's 2001 film virtually eliminates the science
fiction, keeping only the sci-fi setting and the "visitors." The
sentient ocean is gone; it is now the planet itself that displays
mental and physical powers. What we get in place of science fiction
is a dreary, dialogue-laden love story with a silly, sappy ending. In
effect if not literally, this ending transforms Solaris into a ghost
story, complete with a metaphorical heaven. And, as if that weren't
bad enough, Soderbergh's ending does something truly appalling: it
romanticizes suicide.
A more detailed comparison of Lem's novel, Tarkovsky's 1972 film, and
Soderbergh's 2002 remake will make my points clearer. Spoiler's
follow, so if you haven't seen the films you might want to cut out
now.
LEM'S NOVEL
The centerpiece of Lem's novel is the planet's sentient ocean. This
ocean not only has (a) sensory powers, it has (b) an incredibly high
level of mathematical intelligence (it can perform calculations
necessary to control its own orbit within a binary star system, a
system that should create orbital instability), (c) the power to
manipulate matter into physical forms, (d) the power to read (but not
truly comprehend) human minds, (d) the aforementioned the power to
alter its orbit in ways that defy natural gravitational and
centrifugal forces (a power analogous to mobility), and apparently (e)
consciousness.
Earth sends scientists to Solaris to study the planet. They live in
a space station that roams the sky above Solaris. While they sleep
the ocean reads their minds, or at least the darkest corners thereof.
From what it finds (apparently without comprehending), the ocean
creates for each scientist that "visitor"--a living replica of a
person from the scientist's past who is a source of shame or
humiliation. In Kelvin's case, the visitor is his dead wife, whose
suicide was facilitated by Kelvin's behavior. In the case of
Gibarian, a second scientist whose visitor drove him to suicide, the
visitor is an obese, bare-breasted, grass-skirted Negress. She
alternately walks the halls and lies with Gibarian's frozen corpse.
Most likely she was a sexual fetish, hence a source of profound
embarrassment--embarrassment that drove Gibarian to suicide. (The
idea behind these visitors probably comes from the 1956 sci-fi film
Forbidden Planet. That film featured "monsters from the id.")
The surviving scientists eventually find a way to get rid of the
visitors: the scientists build a "neutrino disruptor" that
destabilizes the nonatomic material structure of the visitors. But by
then the visitors have served their two purposes--illustrating the
nature and power of the ocean and giving the plot what little life it
has. The scientists then decide to return to earth. But Kelvin takes
a "flitter" craft on a last-minute exploratory flight over the planet.
What he finds changes his mind about leaving: he decides to stay
despite the absence of any real hope of ever comprehending the ocean.
Lem's novel has a lot in common with Arthur Clarke's Rendezvous with
Rama. Both novels are long on description of "scientific" finds and
short on plot. In Clarke's novel, the long descriptive passages deal
with technology. This technology is embodied in a coasting space ship
that enters the solar system, loops around the sun, and then restarts
its engines for the trip back to wherever it came from. Earth
scientists enter the spaceship and explore it before it departs. The
novel describes what they see. In Lem's novel the descriptive
passages deal with Solaris' ocean and with theories about that ocean.
The ocean is the analog of the spaceship Rama's technology. After a
while, the descriptions in both novels become boring. Both novels
need more plot.
TARKOVSKY'S 1972 FILM
Tarkovsky obviously recognized the plot limitations of Lem's novel
and set out to spice things up a bit. He did this by shoving the
science fiction into the background and spotlighting the relationship
(described partly in flashbacks) between Kelvin and wife. She had
killed herself ten years earlier but is reconstituted by the ocean as
a "visitor." Tarkovsky introduces a whole lot more pathos in the
relationship than you find in the novel. In Lem's words, "what we get
in the film is only how this abominable Kelvin has driven poor Harey
[his wife] to suicide and then he has pangs of conscience, which are
amplified by her appearance [on Solaris]." This mental agony is not at
all entertaining, and neither is it science fiction. It is simply an
abortive (in my case, at least) attempt to play on our heartstrings
with a lot of emotional drivel.
Tarkovsky probably realized that he could get only so far plotwise
with the husband-and-wife subplot, so he created that second subplot.
The new subplot begins in the prologue, back on earth. Kris has a
falling out with his elderly father. The conflict is so poorly
handled by Tarkovsky that I didn't realize anything serious had
occurred until I read in a review that Kris and his father had become
estranged. The writer presumably inferred this from the ending,
because all we see in the prologue is that Kris is skeptical about a
certain detail of an account by Berton, an astronaut, of what Berton
saw on Solaris. Berton is offended. He is an old friend of Kris's
father, so when Berton takes offense, the father also takes offense.
But this conflict didn't strike me as anything more than a
run-of-the-mill disagreement. I perceived no estrangement.
The prologue also hints that the father is terminally ill. The
father says to Kelvin, who is departing for Solaris, "Are you jealous
that he [Berton], not you, will bury me?" The point here is that, if
and when Kelvin returns to earth, it will be too late to reconcile
with his father.
Skip to the ending: SPOILER COMING UP. We see Kris preparing to
leave Solaris and return to earth with the other two surviving
scientists. (Gibarian, who committed suicide, is the nonsurvivor.)
Then we see Kris, apparently back on earth, outside his father's rural
cottage. It is raining. Kris looks in through the window and sees
water from a leaky roof--a roof that was not leaky during rain in the
prologue--dripping into the room. (What sort of symbolism is this?
Is the cottage weeping?) The father comes out. Kris falls on his
knees and grasps his father. He has been given the chance to make
amends with his father, a chance that he was denied with his wife.
The camera then pulls slowly away from the scene, climbing higher and
higher into the sky. And as the visible landscape gradually expands,
we see that the farm, the cottage, and the father are on a tiny island
on Solaris. They are creations of the sentient ocean.
Any sentimental satisfaction or esthetic appreciation evoked by this
final scene disappears when you reflect on it. The father is no more
real than Kris's reconstituted wife was. If the simulated wife was
inadequate for genuine amends, why should the simulated father somehow
be adequate? Even worse, Kris is a prisoner, incarcerated on an
island. He will be devoid of human contact, apart from contact with
his artificial father, for the rest of his life. He can't visit old
friends, make new ones, or even enjoy stimulating conversations with
colleagues or strangers. No travel, no trips to town, no music or
radio, no other entertainment, no books, no scientific work. He can't
even go for a decent walk, because the island is at most a city block
in diameter. To repeat, Kris is a prisoner, confined in a tiny
compound. Tarkovsky may think this ending is uplifting, but I found
it depressing. And still a poor substitute for a genuine plot.
SODERBERGH'S 2001 FILM
Like Tarkovsky, Soderbergh recognizes that turning Lem's novel into a
film requires more plot than Lem provided. And he wants to be
original. Well, not really original, but different from Tarkovsky.
So Soderbergh almost totally abandons the science fiction and turns
the story into a three-way cross between a soap opera, a Hollywood
tear-jerker, and a ghost story embellished with an analogical heaven.
Tarkovsky's "Crime and Punishment" becomes Soderbergh's "Crime and
Reward." MORE SPOILERS COMING UP.
As in the novel and Tarkovsky's film, Gibarian has already committed
suicide before Kris' arrival; only two of the station's three
scientists greet Kris. One of them, Snow, is an irritatingly
implausible neobeatnik with a flip attitude toward just about
everything. The other, Helen Gordon, is a woman; her chief function
is to provide today's obligatory gender balance in the crew. (She
replaces a male scientist from the two earlier versions.) Soon Kris
is visited by his reconstituted dead wife. He sends her off in a
space capsule, but the planet recreates her once more. Imitating her
human progenitor, she then tries suicide (drinking liquid nitrogen),
but she is regenerated a third time. Finally, the neutrino disruptor
gets rid of her, supposedly for good.
The ending again finds Kris remaining on Solaris. But this isn't the
real Kris. This Kris is another of the ocean's replicants, a
"visitor" with no human to haunt. Soderbergh prepares us for this
revelation by introducing a second plot twist. Just before the end we
learn that Snow is really a replicant. He killed the real Snow before
Kris arrived. Thus do we learn that the ocean creates copies not only
of shame-inducing persons from the scientists' pasts (those monsters
from the id) but of the scientists themselves. And when Kris dies,
the ocean creates a new Kris.
We next see the artificial Kris with his wife, who has been recreated
a fourth time. The two replicants are going to live happily ever
after on Solaris in a physical replica of their apartment back on
earth. Kris and his wife, as mere reproductions, are the equivalent
of ghosts, reembodiments of dead persons. The star-crossed lovers are
being given a second chance--as ghosts. They have been reunited in a
metaphorical heaven. They will enjoy a happily-ever-after life beyond
the grave.
I'm sorry, Mr. Soderbergh, but ghost stories and visions of heaven
are no substitute for science fiction. A romantic subplot is not
objectionable. What is objectionable is the attempt to palm off as
science fiction an idiotic love story that is basically out of touch
with Lem's novel.
Just as objectionable is a hero who commits suicide. The "neutrino
disruptor" the scientists build to get rid of the visitors drains the
space station's power supply. The station's anti-gravity machinery
begins to fail, and the station starts falling slowly toward the
planet. Kris and the other surviving scientist, Gordon, will be
killed unless they get into their return-to-earth spacecraft and
hightail it out of there. Gordon gets in. But Kris has a last-moment
change of heart. He decides to stay behind and die. Make no mistake,
this is suicide, not some unfortunate error in judgment. Kris fully
understands that staying behind means death. He deliberately chooses
death. That is, he decides to commit suicide.
Don't be deceived by what happens next. Yes, Kris comes back as what
amounts to his ghost and is happily reunited with what amounts to his
wife's ghost. But he didn't know, and had no way of knowing, this was
going to happen. Kris had no inkling that, by staying behind, he
would be reconstituted as another artificial being. Much less did he
know that his wife would be reconstituted once more and would be there
to greet him with open arms. All Kris knew was that he was ending his
life, deliberately. He was committing suicide.
I have no admiration or empathy for heroes who commit suicide. Mind
you, we're not talking about sacrificing oneself for a cause or to
save someone else. We're talking about death for death's sake,
genuine suicide. Soderbergh may choose to glorify suicide by
pretending it leads to happiness. But don't expect me to buy that
line. There's nothing romantic about suicide. Give me a hero who has
the courage to face life, take his lumps, and uphold his professional
responsibilities.
Peter Tonguette
[Good Lord, am I writing these words again?]
>I have no admiration or empathy for heroes who commit suicide. Mind
>you, we're not talking about sacrificing oneself for a cause or to
>save someone else. We're talking about death for death's sake,
>genuine suicide. Soderbergh may choose to glorify suicide by
>pretending it leads to happiness. But don't expect me to buy that
>line. There's nothing romantic about suicide. Give me a hero who has
>the courage to face life, take his lumps, and uphold his professional
>responsibilities.
I have several problems with this view.
For one, you appear to want characters in art to solicit your admiration or
empathy instead of being truthful or realistic. In other words, you want what
so many critics of Kubrick want: characters who don't reflect a reality, but
who appeal to the audience. I have no problems with characters in art who
don't reflect my own personal life views, including ones who commit "genuine
suicide" or those who "deliberately choose death." Jesus.
For two, Soderbergh is >not< glorifying Kelvin's choice; it was a choice of
desperation, hopelessness to stay behind while Gordon exits the pod. Isn't it
painfully clear that the "life" Kelvin leads after death is counterfeit?
Kelvin's suicide was an act of tragic desperation and hopelessness; he would
rather die - with the possibility of being reunited with a "fake" Rheya (I'm
not fully decided myself if this thought entered Kelvin's head, though,
obviously, I'm leaning towards the interpretation that it did) - than live
without any "version" of her. He has been "seduced," to use Gordon's term, by
this projection of his wife and finds life without "it" unbearable.
I grant you that there's a superficial uplift in the film's closing scene,
because Kelvin really >is< happy (wouldn't anyone?), but all one has to do is
look at the scene in context to see how tragic it is. Kelvin has abandoned
reality for an illusion. All that his act has been "rewarded" with is a
comforting phantasm.
(By the way, Soderbergh's "2001 film" was released in 2002.)
Peter
Josh
>always struck me as the opposite of an auteur, every film different,
>no consistent vision
I've never had much use for the debate over what is or isn't an auteur. One of
the reasons I like Soderbergh is that he doesn't repeat himself, much like
Kubrick never did. Unlike someone like Spielberg, who I love, but has made a
lot of upscale monster movies, or Scorsese, who's made a lot of gangster
movies.
Josh
>It's his most important work. He's tried really hard with this one.
I think "Traffic" is probably his most important work, though I did love
Solaris.
>But I don't think he's very talented at anything. I think he kind of
>knows this, too.
I disagree. I think he's very talented, and I know he doesn't have an
overinflated ego, but I don't think he thinks of himself as a moron.
>I never like Soderbergh's photography and I do not see why it
>continually gets such high praise.
I happen to love his photography. I love his choices for when he wants
something handheld or steadicam, when he wants it static, or on a crane or
dolly. I love how he plays with color to visually represent mood, I love how
in Traffic he used a variety of film stocks to distinguish the different
locales and sections of the film.
Josh
>pretending it leads to happiness.
What makes you think suicide is being glorified here?
Leonard F. Wheat
> Leonard F. Wheat wrote:
> >I have no admiration or empathy for heroes who commit suicide. Mind
> >you, we're not talking about sacrificing oneself for a cause or to
> >save someone else. We're talking about death for death's sake,
> >genuine suicide. Soderbergh may choose to glorify suicide by
> >pretending it leads to happiness. But don't expect me to buy that
> >line. There's nothing romantic about suicide. Give me a hero who has
> >the courage to face life, take his lumps, and uphold his professional
> >responsibilities.
>
> I have several problems with this view.
>
> For one, you appear to want characters in art to solicit your admiration or
> empathy instead of being truthful or realistic.
If Kelvin's suicide is "truthful" and "realistic," it is only because
people sometimes do commit suicide and that's what Soderbergh's script
called for. The script would have been just as truthful and realistic
if Kelvin had gone back to earth. In the last analysis, then, your
"realism" criterion is meaningless, because it can justify anything
short of absurdity.
> For two, Soderbergh is >not< glorifying Kelvin's choice; it was a choice of
> desperation, hopelessness to stay behind while Gordon exits the pod.
You're looking at the wrong scene. What glorifies Kelvin's choice is
not some feeling of hopelessness that drives him to suicide. It is
Soderbergh's decision to transform the tragedy of suicide into the joy
of an afterlife with his wife in a metaphorical heaven. That ending
does indeed glorify and romanticize suicide. The ending is not
tragic, it's corny--pure Hollywood fluff.
> Isn't it
> painfully clear that the "life" Kelvin leads after death is counterfeit?
I'm happy to see YOU acknowledging that Kelvin's life after death is
"counterfeit," but that obviously isn't what Soderbergh intended to
suggest. Intelligent people like you can think through the
implications of the cornball ending, but Soderbergh was playing to the
masses. His ending was clearly intended to be the equivalent of
Gordon MacRae's expiating his sin and making it to heaven at the end
of Carousel. It was intended to be uplifting, happy. A joyous
resurrection overcomes a tragic death. The ending glorified suicide.
> I grant you that there's a superficial uplift in the film's closing scene,
> because Kelvin really >is< happy (wouldn't anyone?), but all one has to do is
> look at the scene in context to see how tragic it is. Kelvin has abandoned
> reality for an illusion.
Reflect for a moment on Soderbergh's ridiculous Sistine Chapel scene,
where a surrogate God (played by a juvenile!) bestows angelhood on
Kelvin. That's not tragedy. That's comedy--in both the Dantean sense
(happy ending) and the modern sense (humorous) of the word.
As for what you call "illusion," it isn't illusion at all where the
script is concerned. The reunion in heaven is reality.
I guess this all goes to prove that one man's (your) sauce is another
man's (my) poison.
> (By the way, Soderbergh's "2001 film" was released in 2002.)
Yup, I know. I got it right the first time: "A more detailed
comparison of Lem's novel, Tarkovsky's 1972 film, and Soderbergh's
2002 remake will make my points clearer." The next two times, where I
wrote "2001," Kubrick's film surfaced and guided my fourth finger to
the wrong key.
Funny, but you missed my other boner. I said that "the ocean" brought
Kelvin back to life. But the sentient ocean is found only in Lem's
novel and Tarkovsky's film. In Soderbergh's film there is no ocean.
It is Solaris, the planet, that is creating ghosts.
Peter Tonguette
>If Kelvin's suicide is "truthful" and "realistic," it is only because
>people sometimes do commit suicide and that's what Soderbergh's script
>called for. The script would have been just as truthful and realistic
>if Kelvin had gone back to earth. In the last analysis, then, your
>"realism" criterion is meaningless, because it can justify anything
>short of absurdity.
By this logic then, why prefer one "realistic" choice over another equally
"realistic" choice? Why would you have preferred Kelvin to go back on earth
apart from the fact you can admire that behavior and can't admire Kelvin
commiting "genuine suicide"? That isn't a good enough reason for me to dismiss
a character's actions. A better question might be whether those actions felt
truthful to >the character<. In my opinion, Kelvin "giving up" after losing
Rheya2 and allowing himself to plummet to Solaris didn't feel like a betrayal
of the character.
>> Isn't it
>> painfully clear that the "life" Kelvin leads after death is counterfeit?
>
>I'm happy to see YOU acknowledging that Kelvin's life after death is
>"counterfeit," but that obviously isn't what Soderbergh intended to
>suggest. Intelligent people like you can think through the
>implications of the cornball ending, but Soderbergh was playing to the
>masses. His ending was clearly intended to be the equivalent of
>Gordon MacRae's expiating his sin and making it to heaven at the end
>of Carousel. It was intended to be uplifting, happy. A joyous
>resurrection overcomes a tragic death. The ending glorified suicide.
I can understand why someone would reach this conclusion. I do not deny that
there's a greater feeling of happiness in this final scene than any other scene
in the film. But to my mind, this is the masterstroke of the film: to give
Kelvin the happy ending he wants, while providing just enough distance for
thoughtful viewers to decipher how tragic this supposed happy ending is. Why
is it tragic?
For one, I view anyone giving up life for death, as Kelvin does, as basically
tragic. For two, what Kelvin had given up life >for< is, as I've said, a
patent illusion, albeit a deeply comforting one. For three, the ending shows
Kelvin >still< unable to deal with his dead wife's complications and
contradictions; he's happy because he's reunited with Rheya2, the projection of
his memories, and not the complex woman (what woman isn't?) that was his wife.
This doesn't make Kelvin a bad person. It makes him a version of what, to
greater or lesser degrees, we all are: people who want "mirrors," to invoke a
line in the film which has direct bearing here, in our relationships instead of
actual other people.
The very fact that the character sees all of this as a "happy ending" just
makes it more melancholy for me.
>> I grant you that there's a superficial uplift in the film's closing scene,
>> because Kelvin really >is< happy (wouldn't anyone?), but all one has to
>do is
>> look at the scene in context to see how tragic it is. Kelvin has abandoned
>> reality for an illusion.
>
>Reflect for a moment on Soderbergh's ridiculous Sistine Chapel scene,
>where a surrogate God (played by a juvenile!) bestows angelhood on
>Kelvin. That's not tragedy. That's comedy--in both the Dantean sense
>(happy ending) and the modern sense (humorous) of the word.
>
>As for what you call "illusion," it isn't illusion at all where the
>script is concerned. The reunion in heaven is reality.
Well, I would take issue that it's literally "heaven," if that's what you mean.
For starters, I just don't see it in terms of the film. The ship plummets to
Solaris. The following scenes have Kelvin in an "enviroment" which replicates
his home on earth - we can assume this "enviroment" is generated by Solaris, as
we see the ship (and Kelvin) heading towards it and not their souls drifting up
to heaven. Rheya2 then approaches him; this, too, would support the idea that
they are on Solaris, as a character mentions earlier in the film that the
"visitors" need to go back to where they "came from" (Solaris). I grant you
that there's "religious" imagery in some of these sequences, but I'd be careful
about taking it too literally especially since...
Soderbergh is an avowed atheist, so I find it highly unlikely that he would
literally intend for viewers to read the final scene as taking place in
"heaven." The alternative I've suggested - that they are inhabiting Solaris
after their deaths - may strike you as just as mystical, but at least it's
consistent with the film's logic.
Peter
dutch_angle
> [Good Lord, am I writing these words again?]
[Yes, you are like the Messias; it is so wonderful that you are
willing to write these words again. Thanks. Jesus! We're not worthy.
Amen.]
>
> >I have no admiration or empathy for heroes who commit suicide. Mind
> >you, we're not talking about sacrificing oneself for a cause or to
> >save someone else. We're talking about death for death's sake,
> >genuine suicide. Soderbergh may choose to glorify suicide by
> >pretending it leads to happiness. But don't expect me to buy that
> >line. There's nothing romantic about suicide. Give me a hero who has
> >the courage to face life, take his lumps, and uphold his professional
> >responsibilities.
>
> I have several problems with this view.
>
> For one, you appear to want characters in art to solicit your admiration or
> empathy instead of being truthful or realistic. In other words, you want what
> so many critics of Kubrick want: characters who don't reflect a reality, but
> who appeal to the audience.
For one, you are making assumptions.
In other words: try asking questions first.
> I have no problems with characters in art who
> don't reflect my own personal life views, including ones who commit "genuine
> suicide" or those who "deliberately choose death."
Wow, outstanding view you have.
There might be a chance that this goes for Mr Wheat too, don't you
think?
> Jesus.
Yes, son, what's up?
> For two, Soderbergh is >not< glorifying Kelvin's choice; it was a choice of
> desperation, hopelessness to stay behind while Gordon exits the pod.
For two, it's the choice of a very clever Hollywood screenwriter who
certainly doesn't feel any desperation or hopelessness.
For three, this choice of desperation and hopelessness wasn't really
developed that well, was it? It was rather flat and thin and
two-dimensional and predictable.
> Isn't it
> painfully clear that the "life" Kelvin leads after death is counterfeit?
Especially painful, yes. Poor cinema is always very painful.
> Kelvin's suicide was an act of tragic desperation and hopelessness; he would
> rather die - with the possibility of being reunited with a "fake" Rheya (I'm
> not fully decided myself if this thought entered Kelvin's head, though,
> obviously, I'm leaning towards the interpretation that it did) - than live
> without any "version" of her. He has been "seduced," to use Gordon's term, by
> this projection of his wife and finds life without "it" unbearable.
So that's how clever Soderbergh the Chameleon is; it's the Arty
Hollywood Happy Tragic Ending.
I think Soderbergh found the ending without the Kelvin-Rheya-Reunion
unbearable, so he came up with this wonderful compromise. He certainly
has fooled you.
> I grant you that there's a superficial uplift in the film's closing scene,
> because Kelvin really >is< happy (wouldn't anyone?), but all one has to do is
> look at the scene in context to see how tragic it is.
I grant you that this supposed superficial uplift in the film's
closing scene is as clever as the ending of A.I. Solaris is not only a
Hollywood-redo of Solaris, it's copying A.I.'s ending and Solaris'
overall intelligence is like Spielberg's Always, though instead of
being just an innocent fantasy-comedy it's a really false and
arty-farty flick.
All one has to do is look at Soderbergh's copypaste habit, without
ever throwing in any new or deep personal insights and view on the
novel's complex themes to see how dreadfully tragic this kind of
fake-cinema is.
> Kelvin has abandoned
> reality for an illusion. All that his act has been "rewarded" with is a
> comforting phantasm.
It seems you have abandoned reality for an illusion. It often happens
to people who think they are the only ones who provide the deep
insights. What you analyse out of Soderbergh's Solaris is painfully
obvious and a real example of this film's total idealess shamefull
copypaste-way of making movies.
It is your view that is not comforting, though it really reads like a
phantasm.
> (By the way, Soderbergh's "2001 film" was released in 2002.)
This much is true. Bravo.
So much for copying Arrogance, capital A...
Leave that up to me.
I think Mr Wheat provided some good info.
d.a.
dutch_angle
> there's a greater feeling of happiness in this final scene than any other scene
> in the film. But to my mind, this is the masterstroke of the film: to give
> Kelvin the happy ending he wants, while providing just enough distance for
> thoughtful viewers to decipher how tragic this supposed happy ending is. Why
> is it tragic?
Because it isn't.
It's a commercial compromise, not quite a masterstroke.
Soderbergh's Solaris provides just enough for thoughtful viewers to
understand that.
>
> For one, I view anyone giving up life for death, as Kelvin does, as basically
> tragic.
For one, I would view any director that really develops this in a
challenging philosophical and cinematic way, with personal vision and
depth, as basically inspiring.
Soderbergh is no such director. Tarkovsky is.
> For two, what Kelvin had given up life >for< is, as I've said, a
> patent illusion, albeit a deeply comforting one.
For two, this view is painfully obvious.
Tarkovsky didn't compromise, Soderbergh did.
> For three, the ending shows
> Kelvin >still< unable to deal with his dead wife's complications and
> contradictions; he's happy because he's reunited with Rheya2, the projection of
> his memories, and not the complex woman (what woman isn't?) that was his wife.
Do you say the same about Spielberg's A.I.?
For three, this view on Soderbergh's way of ending his redo of Solaris
is for the simpleminded; that is what your analysis makes clear.
> This doesn't make Kelvin a bad person. It makes him a version of what, to
> greater or lesser degrees, we all are: people who want "mirrors," to invoke a
> line in the film which has direct bearing here, in our relationships instead of
> actual other people.
This makes Soderbergh a bad person.
Or no, make that: a simple person.
>
> The very fact that the character sees all of this as a "happy ending" just
> makes it more melancholy for me.
Do you think the same of Spielberg's A.I. ending?
>
> >> I grant you that there's a superficial uplift in the film's closing scene,
> >> because Kelvin really >is< happy (wouldn't anyone?), but all one has to
> do is
> >> look at the scene in context to see how tragic it is. Kelvin has abandoned
> >> reality for an illusion.
> >
> >Reflect for a moment on Soderbergh's ridiculous Sistine Chapel scene,
> >where a surrogate God (played by a juvenile!) bestows angelhood on
> >Kelvin. That's not tragedy. That's comedy--in both the Dantean sense
> >(happy ending) and the modern sense (humorous) of the word.
> >
> >As for what you call "illusion," it isn't illusion at all where the
> >script is concerned. The reunion in heaven is reality.
>
> Well, I would take issue that it's literally "heaven," if that's what you mean.
Well, to me it certainly feels like a Spielberg heaven, because that
is what I mean.
> For starters, I just don't see it in terms of the film. The ship plummets to
> Solaris. The following scenes have Kelvin in an "enviroment" which replicates
> his home on earth - we can assume this "enviroment" is generated by Solaris, as
> we see the ship (and Kelvin) heading towards it and not their souls drifting up
> to heaven.
For starters, I would see all of this as Disneyesk.
All sounds like A.I. again.
> Rheya2 then approaches him; this, too, would support the idea that
> they are on Solaris, as a character mentions earlier in the film that the
> "visitors" need to go back to where they "came from" (Solaris). I grant you
> that there's "religious" imagery in some of these sequences, but I'd be careful
> about taking it too literally especially since...
... we shouldn't take Soderbergh neither literal nor serious.
> Soderbergh is an avowed atheist, so I find it highly unlikely that he would
> literally intend for viewers to read the final scene as taking place in
> "heaven."
Soderbergh is an avowed copyist, so I find it highly likely that he
would literally intend to compromise the way he did with the final
scene.
Both Disney fans and "thoughtful" viewers are satisfied.
> The alternative I've suggested - that they are inhabiting Solaris
> after their deaths - may strike you as just as mystical, but at least it's
> consistent with the film's logic.
The film's only logic: Soderbergh in pseudo-artful-mode.
After all, his first name is Steven.
d.a.
Leonard F. Wheat
> Leonard F. Wheat wrote:
>
> >If Kelvin's suicide is "truthful" and "realistic," it is only because
> >people sometimes do commit suicide and that's what Soderbergh's script
> >called for. The script would have been just as truthful and realistic
> >if Kelvin had gone back to earth. In the last analysis, then, your
> >"realism" criterion is meaningless, because it can justify anything
> >short of absurdity.
>
> By this logic then, why prefer one "realistic" choice over another equally
> "realistic" choice? Why would you have preferred Kelvin to go back on earth
> apart from the fact you can admire that behavior and can't admire Kelvin
> commiting "genuine suicide"? That isn't a good enough reason for me to
< dismiss a character's actions.
You're missing the point. You wrote that "you appear to want
characters in art to solicit your admiration or empathy instead of
being truthful or realistic." Here you are defending Soderberg's
ending on grounds that the first stage of the ending, namely, Kelvin's
decision to commit suicide, is realistic. I was merely pointing out
that realism isn't the issue, since it would also have been realistic
for Kelvin to go back to earth. You therefore can't justify the
ending on grounds of realism.
You further miss the point by assuming that my basic objection to the
ending is the suicide. Although I do object to the suicide, that
objection wasn't my essential point. What I objected to was the
glorification of suicide, Soderbergh's turning suicide into a romantic
experience. I was objection to an ending that was just so much
emotional pap.
Meanwhile, if realism is the criterion that YOU want to uphold, what
happens after Kelvin's suicide is not at all realistic. In real life,
suicide does not lead to happiness on the part of the victim. It
merely leads to death and oblivion. Neither does suicide lead to
reunion with loved ones, although I'll grant that those persons who
are religions AND believe in heaven (not all religious persons)
believe otherwise.
Now for your question, "Why would you have preferred Kelvin to go back
on earth
apart from the fact you can admire that behavior and can't admire
Kelvin
commiting 'genuine suicide'?" The preference I implied was for Kelvin
to reject suicide. Since staying in the falling station means death,
rejecting suicide does mean going back to earth, but returning to
earth wasn't my point. I would nevertheless be willing to make it a
point. Kelvin was sent to Solaris on a fact finding mission, and he
had a professional obligation to complete his mission (assuming that
was within his power, which it was).
The more important point, though, is that suicide should not be
glorified. Restoring a dead person to life and then rewarding him
with romantic bliss does glorify suicide. And whereas you defend
tragedy as an art form, that defense does not apply to this situation,
because there is no tragedy.
A fundamental problem with your analysis is that you are rewriting the
ending, offering us a "viewer's edit." You want to pretend that the
film ends with the shuttle heading back to earth, with Kelvin left
behind. That would indeed have been genuine tragedy, and allowable in
the name of art. But you've forgotten something, Peter: you don't
have an editor's license. You must base your argument on what really
happens in the story. What really happens is that Kelvin comes back
to life, is reunited with his wife, and enjoys a new life in a
metaphorical heaven. You can't ignore what happens after Kelvin
decides to give up his life.
It's a ghost story, Peter. A ghost story with heaven tacked on. It
isn't tragedy. It isn't realism. It's just a lot of emotional goo.
> >> Isn't it
> >> painfully clear that the "life" Kelvin leads after death is counterfeit?
> >
> >I'm happy to see YOU acknowledging that Kelvin's life after death is
> >"counterfeit," but that obviously isn't what Soderbergh intended to
> >suggest. Intelligent people like you can think through the
> >implications of the cornball ending, but Soderbergh was playing to the
> >masses. His ending was clearly intended to be the equivalent of
> >Gordon MacRae's expiating his sin and making it to heaven at the end
> >of Carousel. It was intended to be uplifting, happy. A joyous
> >resurrection overcomes a tragic death. The ending glorified suicide.
> I can understand why someone would reach this conclusion. I do not deny that
> there's a greater feeling of happiness in this final scene than any other > scene
> in the film. But to my mind, this is the masterstroke of the film: to give
> Kelvin the happy ending he wants, while providing just enough distance for
> thoughtful viewers to decipher how tragic this supposed happy ending is. Why
> is it tragic?
>
> For one, I view anyone giving up life for death, as Kelvin does, as basically
> tragic.
Giving up live may be tragic in real life but not in a fictional world
where death is merely a transition to another state, a state of bliss.
> For two, what Kelvin had given up life >for< is, as I've said, a
> patent illusion, albeit a deeply comforting one.
Again, you're confusing the real world with the fictional one. What
Kelvin gets in the fictional world is not an illusion at all. He has
actually been reconstituted as a material being, and so has Rheya.
> For three [the third reason the ending is tragic], the ending shows
> Kelvin >still< unable to deal with his dead wife's complications and
> contradictions; he's happy because he's reunited with Rheya2, the projection > of
> his memories, and not the complex woman (what woman isn't?) that was his wife.
Perhaps I've forgotten some detail of the final scene, but I recall
nothing suggesting that Kelvin was "still unable to deal with his
wife's complications." That seems to be just an assumption on your
point. One could just as easily assume that Kelvin now has a
determination to work out his differences. That shouldn't be too much
of a problem, because the chief difference is that she didn't tell him
she was sterile. Her sterility should no longer be an issue.
> >> I grant you that there's a superficial uplift in the film's closing scene,
> >> because Kelvin really >is< happy (wouldn't anyone?), but all one has to
> do is
> >> look at the scene in context to see how tragic it is. Kelvin has abandoned
> >> reality for an illusion.
> >Reflect for a moment on Soderbergh's ridiculous Sistine Chapel scene,
> >where a surrogate God (played by a juvenile!) bestows angelhood on
> >Kelvin. That's not tragedy. That's comedy--in both the Dantean sense
> >(happy ending) and the modern sense (humorous) of the word.
> >As for what you call "illusion," it isn't illusion at all where the
> >script is concerned. The reunion in heaven is reality.
> Well, I would take issue that it's literally "heaven," if that's what you > mean.
I didn't say the rematerialized apartment on Solaris was LITERALLY
heaven. I said, "In effect if NOT LITERALLY, this ending transforms
Solaris into a ghost story, complete with a METAPHORICAL heaven." I
later repeated the point: "They have been reuinited in a METAPHORICAL
heaven." It is the reunion that is "reality." In Soderbergh's
fictitious story, the lovers really are reunited. It is a happy,
romantic ending, and is intended as such. Suicide has been
romanticized.
David Mullen
>glorified.
I didn't find the ending uplifting, but melancholy. The character has
chosen to go down into oblivion with a comforting illusion of a resurrected
dead wife that Soderbegh is very careful to show couldn't possibly be his
real wife, but merely something conjured from his mind, and inaccurately at
that.
The ending is about as romantic and uplifting as the ending of "Brazil" with
main character lobotomized but firmly entrapped in a dream state that he
preferred to his real life. If the movie truly were meant to be taken as a
"true love conquers all" storyline, I doubt that Soderbergh would have put
so much effort into making the film as cold and austere as possible. The
film is ambivalent about Kelvin's decision at best and hardly could be
described as a "glorification of suicide".
David Mullen
Peter Tonguette
>You're missing the point. You wrote that "you appear to want
>characters in art to solicit your admiration or empathy instead of
>being truthful or realistic." Here you are defending Soderberg's
>ending on grounds that the first stage of the ending, namely, Kelvin's
>decision to commit suicide, is realistic. I was merely pointing out
>that realism isn't the issue, since it would also have been realistic
>for Kelvin to go back to earth. You therefore can't justify the
>ending on grounds of realism.
I just addressed that by asking why you prefer one "realistic" action
(returning to earth) over another equally "realistic" action (commiting
suicide.) You haven't really answered beyond what you wrote in your original
post - that you like your heros to face up to things, uphold his professional
responsibility, etc. But we go into this more below.
>You further miss the point by assuming that my basic objection to the
>ending is the suicide. Although I do object to the suicide, that
>objection wasn't my essential point. What I objected to was the
>glorification of suicide, Soderbergh's turning suicide into a romantic
>experience. I was objection to an ending that was just so much
>emotional pap.
See below. It's my view that the ending is not romantic (though, natch, it is
emotional), thus the suicide is not glorified.
>The preference I implied was for Kelvin
>to reject suicide. Since staying in the falling station means death,
>rejecting suicide does mean going back to earth, but returning to
>earth wasn't my point. I would nevertheless be willing to make it a
>point. Kelvin was sent to Solaris on a fact finding mission, and he
>had a professional obligation to complete his mission (assuming that
>was within his power, which it was).
Why should the character behave this way though? You or I might not behave the
way Kelvin does, but surely you're aware that there are people who do not live
up to their professional obligations, especially when their dead loved ones
mysteriously re-appear in physical form. Again, the actions of Kelvin's
character struck me as plausible within the context of the film.
>A fundamental problem with your analysis is that you are rewriting the
>ending, offering us a "viewer's edit." You want to pretend that the
>film ends with the shuttle heading back to earth, with Kelvin left
>behind. That would indeed have been genuine tragedy, and allowable in
>the name of art. But you've forgotten something, Peter: you don't
>have an editor's license. You must base your argument on what really
>happens in the story. What really happens is that Kelvin comes back
>to life, is reunited with his wife, and enjoys a new life in a
>metaphorical heaven. You can't ignore what happens after Kelvin
>decides to give up his life.
>
>It's a ghost story, Peter. A ghost story with heaven tacked on. It
>isn't tragedy. It isn't realism. It's just a lot of emotional goo.
Well, for one, I would have no problem if the story was a "ghost story." One
of the greatest works of literature ever, "Hamlet," is - on some level - a
"ghost story." But anyway...
I really have not re-written the literal events of the ending. Kelvin is
clearly seen exiting the pod Gordon is departing in. He leaves for the ship,
which is seen from an exterior shot to be plummeting to Solaris. We don't see
his death, but we can reasonably assume he has died. We then see him
inhabiting an enviroment generated by the planet, reunited with Rheya2. It is
here where we depart, as you see this as a gooey romantic wish fulfillment, and
I see it as a sort of tragedy when one gets beyond the superficial happiness of
Kelvin in the scene.
>Giving up live may be tragic in real life but not in a fictional world
>where death is merely a transition to another state, a state of bliss.
I'm not so sure. I consider drug use "tragic" (funny applying a term in art to
real life, but it'll do) because users are, in some sense, rejecting real life
to live in a kind of fictional world of periodic bliss. Maybe this isn't such
a bad analogy for what I view the ending of "Solaris" to be.
>> For two, what Kelvin had given up life >for< is, as I've said, a
>> patent illusion, albeit a deeply comforting one.
>
>Again, you're confusing the real world with the fictional one. What
>Kelvin gets in the fictional world is not an illusion at all. He has
>actually been reconstituted as a material being, and so has Rheya.
Yes, they physically exist, but are they the "real" people? I wouldn't
consider Rheya2 (the name I'm calling the version of Rheya who appears on the
space station throughout the picture) the "real thing" and it's Rheya2 who I
believe is seen embracing Kelvin in the film's final moments.
>Perhaps I've forgotten some detail of the final scene, but I recall
>nothing suggesting that Kelvin was "still unable to deal with his
>wife's complications." That seems to be just an assumption on your
>point. One could just as easily assume that Kelvin now has a
>determination to work out his differences. That shouldn't be too much
>of a problem, because the chief difference is that she didn't tell him
>she was sterile. Her sterility should no longer be an issue.
It's an assumption of mine, sure - it's not literally stated in the film, but
I'm inferring it based on my view that it's Rheya2 who Kelvin is reunited with
on Solaris. Being a projection of Kelvin's memories, by definition she's
incapable of growth or change beyond what he wants to remember. He's given the
Rheya he wants - one who can be whatever he wants.
>> Well, I would take issue that it's literally "heaven," if that's what
>you > mean.
>
>I didn't say the rematerialized apartment on Solaris was LITERALLY
>heaven. I said, "In effect if NOT LITERALLY, this ending transforms
>Solaris into a ghost story, complete with a METAPHORICAL heaven." I
>later repeated the point: "They have been reuinited in a METAPHORICAL
>heaven." It is the reunion that is "reality." In Soderbergh's
>fictitious story, the lovers really are reunited. It is a happy,
>romantic ending, and is intended as such. Suicide has been
>romanticized.
For Chris Kelvin, suicide has resulted in happiness and redemption; for viewers
who choose to view things from other than his perspective alone, his happiness
is leveraged by the fact that it is with a mere echo of his real wife and in an
illusory enviroment.
Peter
PT Caffey
> there's a greater feeling of happiness in this final scene than any other scene
> in the film. But to my mind, this is the masterstroke of the film: to give
> Kelvin the happy ending he wants, while providing just enough distance for
> The very fact that the character sees all of this as a "happy ending" just
>
> Peter
I think you have it exactly right. Of course the ending of Solaris is
both tragic and melancholy for the reasons you state. The
counterargument seems to be that Soderbergh, as a simpleminded hack,
never "intended" any such subtext. In this view, the kiss that ends
Solaris is a variation on the comedy of remarriage, in which our hero
and heroine, despite vast troubles, "patch things up." What's
Soderbergh's purported motivation for this trite turn? A compromise
for "commercial reasons"--as if such a move could have ever made an
art film like Solaris into a blockbuster! Okay, I think I understand
what's going on here. For those who dislike Soderbergh's previous
work or resent the mere idea of him remaking Solaris, it's critical
that the final result be considered "simplistic" and "corny." But the
film is what it is, intentions aside.
In crossing through the looking glass, Kelvin has joined the ghosts in
the mirror. He may be smiling now, but once upon a time there was a
real wife who is no more. This fact underlies everything. Those of
us who consider this turn tragic and rather melancholy are not merely
projecting our moody nature onto the sunny climes of Solaris. It's
there already.
PT Caffey
PT Caffey
> >It's the reunion that is "reality." In Soderbergh's
> >fictitious story, the lovers really are reunited. It is a happy,
> >romantic ending, and is intended as such. Suicide has been
> >romanticized.
>
> For Chris Kelvin, suicide has resulted in happiness and redemption; for viewers
> who choose to view things from other than his perspective alone, his happiness
> is leveraged by the fact that it is with a mere echo of his real wife and in an
> illusory enviroment.
>
> Peter
As I've posted elsewhere, I agree with your interpretation, Peter.
Those who insist on equating "wish fulfillment" with "happiness"
haven't read their Arabic folktales closely enough (not to mention
"The Monkey's Paw"). And Soderbergh's intentions (which are
mischaracterized above) are irrelevant.
On the other side, we have Leonard Wheat's view that a "happy,
romantic ending" is determined by a character's perception of his own
fate at film's end. Knowing more than what a character knows amounts
to "viewer editing." I am glad I got the memo: Wheat's swoop neatly
dispenses with complexity, irony and the film career of Stanley
Kubrick. Life is simpler now.
In this simpler world, Solaris "glorifies suicide." Of course, it
doesn't exactly glorify Rheya's impulsive suicide, which leaves Kelvin
a walking shell. And it doesn't really glorify Gibarian's suicide; he
abandons to the echoing canyons of the space station what must be a
very lonesome and befuddled replica of a little boy. Not much romance
to be found there. It seems that only Kelvin's suicide is
"glorified." That's Tragedy 2, Glory of Suicide 1. Already, even our
simpler world has developed complications.
Of course, even in Kelvin's "glorious" reconstitution, the bliss isn't
pure. Notice his "Can I believe my eyes?" approach to "Rheya." Why
the hesitation? Where's the "Hey, honey! I'm home" swagger of a
clueless replica? Could it be that hardwired into Kelvin's newly
minted self is the very pang of loss he was so desperate to escape?
Even for Kelvin--inside his fictional reality--it's his awareness of
loss that makes, for him, the "reunion" so sweet. I take this as a
sign of warning. Even in Kelvin's case, the glory of suicide has been
tainted.
That's Tragedy 3, Glory of Suicide 0. Read 'em and weep.
PT Caffey
mark de rozario
Did Tarkovsky think the ending 'uplifting'? I have never viewed it as
such, for precisely the reasons you indicate. It always struck me as
deeply ambivalent.
Tarkovsky's Solaris has two important themes: can we make contact with
an inhuman cosmos? and, Can we face up to our desire (which is the
secret of what we are)? These two themes recur in Stalker, where the
travelers into the Zone prove ultimately unable to do either. In both
Solaris and Stalker, what seems at first sight to be a fairy tale
granter of wishes (the sentient ocean, the Room) ends up as tormenting
challenge, holding up terrifying mirrors to the reality of human
desire.
For Tarkovsky, the two themes are intimately related. Contact with the
alien is only possible when we have first understood our own desires.
To that extent, Solaris, like Stalker, is a critique of science
fiction, and of the positivist, objectivist model of enquiry that
often underpins it, with its assumption that the universe can be
understood independently of desire. There can be no possibility of
encounter with the alien, by definition, while we remain within the
web of presuppositions that organise experience for us. Such
presuppositions trap the alien just as surely as they trap us.
That is why, for me at least, the ending of Tarkovsky's Solaris is
profoundly ambivalent: has Kelvin reconciled himself with the
impossibility of escaping from his own desiring-economy? Has he
accepted that he must come to terms with himself and his past before
he can encounter the Outside? Or is he falling, once again, into the
terrible seduction of treating the Solaris simulations as if they
were 'real'?
David Kirkpatrick
It's been a while since I've read Solaris or seen the Tarkovsky film and
I haven't seen the Soderberg version -- but I'd like to make one remark:
The name "Kelvin" seems to me to be a dead giveaway of Lem's intentions.
The Kelvin scale of temperature measurement is often given as a prime
example of a "ratio" scale of measurement, as opposed to Fahrenheit and
Celcius, which are both "interval". I.e. it has an absolute zero, not
merely an arbitrarily defined midpoint. As such it is an apt (better
duck, Dutch guy) metaphor for a whole realm of philosophies and
attitudes relating to, as you say, "positivism", behaviorism,
reductionism, scientism, the quest for objectivity in the immanent
rather than the transcendental direction, that is: in nature and the
"real" as opposed to the language of a community and the "true".
A reality that interacts with desire, imagination and memory is a world
in which "interval" measurement, "ordinal" measurement and "nominal"
measurement have an equal standing with the "ratio". Humanism is based
on the weakest of scales of measurement, in the eyes of science, but
humanism is based on humanity being the measure of all things.
Whether this comes out in the new film, I'd be interested to see.
Pessimistically, I'm concerned that the SF elements might be used merely
to illustrate the dynamics of a love story. I'll find out, soon enough.
But based on Lem's other writings, which often revolve around the
absurdities of robot -- and technocratic -- logic, my view of Solaris as
being primarily about epistemology and metaphysics seems to fit. By
referencing a scale of measurement, "Kelvin" might function as a
metaphor for paradigms in the Kuhnian sense in general, both in the
narrow scientific sense and the broader way in which it sometimes
generalized to the humanities.
David
dutch_angle
> an inhuman cosmos?
I wouldn't put it this way, because this implies a (too) strict
scientific quest that would be answered with either a yes or a no,
whereas I think Tarkovsky aims at a far deeper level; the "cosmos" as
the "outside world" obviously mirrors the "inside world", our own
individual world, our conscience, our mental crisis, our own "cosmos".
For me, the search for knowledge into the depths of the outside world,
as far as deep space, is contrasted with it's immediate opposite
quest, the quest for self-knowledge; in Tarkovsky's Solaris, this is
most significantly layed out by the development of Kelvin's character,
a man that at first doesn't seem to acknowledge, or think much and
therefore denies, human emotion. Within the chaotic labyrintian arena
of the space station, with it's curved corridors, he's after some
scientific and psychological truth of what has happened to it's
inhabitants but he becomes more and more confronted with his own past.
Therefore, I don't think that Tarkovsky really is interested in
whether we can make contact with an inhuman cosmos or not; the way he
establishes the cosmos serves the purpose of further developing the
inner quest, a spiritual search for the human spirit; what makes us
human?
> and, Can we face up to our desire (which is the
> secret of what we are)?
This question for me is too simple as well. What is firmly connected
with the contrast of both the "outside" and "inside" quest for
knowledge, is the question: what are the consequences of facing up
with our desires, our longing to reconcile with the ghosts of our
past, which, in a way, are defining our identity, "who we are".
Because of this, I think, the film's prologue and epilogue are very
important. With the prologue these themes are already introduced
through the confrontation with a former friend, the astronaut Berton
and with Kelvin's father; in this prologue it becomes clear how Kelvin
denies (seems to deny) human emotion, how the "humanity" within
himself has already stiffened. The conflict with his father further
deepens this introduction, that in itself is obviously related to
reality, within the boundaries of Kelvin's "birthplace", his roots.
The epilogue is a devastating contrast, because it at once confirms
the impossibility of a "second chance" as well as the unreality of
Kelvin's "return" to his own roots, his past, and his reconciliation
with this past, with his father.
All of this, and especially the way Tarkovsky develops these themes
through a series of discomforting and painful confrontations, in a
purely cinematic way, makes his film superior to Soderbergh's remake.
It is Tarkovsky, not Soderbergh, who really reaches the depth of the
human soul.
> These two themes recur in Stalker, where the
> travelers into the Zone prove ultimately unable to do either. In both
> Solaris and Stalker, what seems at first sight to be a fairy tale
> granter of wishes (the sentient ocean, the Room) ends up as tormenting
> challenge, holding up terrifying mirrors to the reality of human
> desire.
>
> For Tarkovsky, the two themes are intimately related. Contact with the
> alien is only possible when we have first understood our own desires.
> To that extent, Solaris, like Stalker, is a critique of science
> fiction, and of the positivist, objectivist model of enquiry that
> often underpins it, with its assumption that the universe can be
> understood independently of desire. There can be no possibility of
> encounter with the alien, by definition, while we remain within the
> web of presuppositions that organise experience for us. Such
> presuppositions trap the alien just as surely as they trap us.
I don't think that "the alien" is that important for Tarkovsky. It is
the eternal quest for knowledge that causes the tragedy, according to
Tarkovsky. The way he uses technology and establishes it through the
design of, for instance, the space station, causes a sense of "death"
and "self destruction", whereas the projection of Kelvin's inner
world, his mental crisis so to speak, causes a far more faithful,
hopeful human presence, through the character of Khari, Kelvin's dead
wife; the more Kelvin acknowledges her, the more he acknowledges the
ghosts of his past, the more human she becomes; this causes her to
realise how she cannot be and will never be his beloved wife. The
result of all of these (self-) confrontation is the revival of the
human within Kelvin, his "humanity". As if Tarvovsky tells us to go
searching within the depths of ourselves, and not expect much of the
quest in deep space, in the cosmos; the mystery of the cosmos is
within ourselves. We are able to "find" only if we have faith and are
able to gain or regain a belief in the spiritual.
> That is why, for me at least, the ending of Tarkovsky's Solaris is
> profoundly ambivalent: has Kelvin reconciled himself with the
> impossibility of escaping from his own desiring-economy? Has he
> accepted that he must come to terms with himself and his past before
> he can encounter the Outside? Or is he falling, once again, into the
> terrible seduction of treating the Solaris simulations as if they
> were 'real'?
That is why I don't really think that Tarkovsky thinks the ending of
his Solaris is "uplifting" (nor "depressing" for that matter), it is a
little more complex, since it seems to suggest that both the quest
into the outside and the inside world(s) are like wishful thinking;
the result of our longing, our desire, our feelings of guilt, shame,
fantasy, hope, faith etc. However, both in Solaris and in Stalker,
these quests seem to end in "depression", but the deeper truth, I
think is that all the main characters do end up with something that is
essential for human beings; belief, and our conscience, the very
essence of what makes us human. The travelers in Stalker may not have
entered the room, but they have "entered" their inner worlds and this
quest certainly is honored and spiritually rewarded. This is the
"elixer" of the Searchers in both Solaris and Stalker. (Personally, I
think the ending of Stalker is more succesful and less a "twist" like
the ending of Solaris)
Soderbergh can never scratch these kind of layers.
d.a.
Leonard F. Wheat
> >The more important point, though, is that suicide should not be
> >glorified.
>
> I didn't find the ending uplifting, but melancholy. The character has
> chosen to go down into oblivion with a comforting illusion of a resurrected
> dead wife that Soderbegh is very careful to show couldn't possibly be his
> real wife, but merely something conjured from his mind, and inaccurately at
> that.
Your point has some validity but not much. I didn't find the ending
uplifting either, but not because it was melancholy. What struck you
as melancholy struck me as just plain silly--in part for the same
reason you found it melancholy and in part because grafting a ghost
story onto Lem's science fiction story was a ridiculous idea.
Soderbergh takes a serious theme and then bastardizes it into sappy,
low-brow "entertainment."
A thoughtful person like yourself can see through the holes in the
ending. You can see that what Soderbergh surely wanted us to slurp up
as a happy ending is not as idyllic as his intended interpretation.
If you consider Rheya's being an imperfect replica of Kelvin's
original wife to be a cause for a "melancholy" reaction, that's an
honest reaction I can't argue with. But it didn't affect me that way,
and I'm sure that Soderbergh thought he was presenting something
uplifting. He was romanticizing suicide, and that was his intention.
His ending had happiness written all over it.
Leonard F. Wheat
> Leonard F. Wheat wrote:
>
> >You're missing the point. You wrote that "you appear to want
> >characters in art to solicit your admiration or empathy instead of
> >being truthful or realistic." Here you are defending Soderberg's
> >ending on grounds that the first stage of the ending, namely, Kelvin's
> >decision to commit suicide, is realistic. I was merely pointing out
> >that realism isn't the issue, since it would also have been realistic
> >for Kelvin to go back to earth. You therefore can't justify the
> >ending on grounds of realism.
> I just addressed that by asking why you prefer one "realistic" action
> (returning to earth) over another equally "realistic" action (commiting
> suicide.) You haven't really answered beyond what you wrote in your original
> post - that you like your heros to face up to things, uphold his professional
> responsibility, etc.
Why do I prefer a return-to-earth ending to a suicide ending (without
regard to what comes after the suicide)? Because I prefer behavior
that exhibits emotional maturity, acceptance of life's disappointments
and tragedies, and concern for the effects of one's actions on
friends, colleagues, and the general public. Regarding the last
point--the effects of one's actions--Kelvin was sent to Solaris to
learn what was going on there and to provide his superiors with vital
information. Kelvin had a professional obligation to complete his
mission and, in doing so, to contribute to the base of scientific
knowledge about the planet. Am I to admire or feel empathy towards a
person who turns his back on his responsibilities to engage in
self-centered behavior?
Conversely, I have a low regard for suicide and an even lower regard
for fictional suicides that lack the contextual elements needed to
turn routine suicide into a deeper sort of tragedy. A contextual
element of the above sort would be something like a suicide based on
misunderstanding or Madam Butterfly's applying the knife moments
before the return of the lover she thought would never return.
> >A fundamental problem with your analysis is that you are rewriting the
> >ending, offering us a "viewer's edit." You want to pretend that the
> >film ends with the shuttle heading back to earth, with Kelvin left
> >behind. That would indeed have been genuine tragedy, and allowable in
> >the name of art. But you've forgotten something, Peter: you don't
> >have an editor's license. You must base your argument on what really
> >happens in the story. What really happens is that Kelvin comes back
> >to life, is reunited with his wife, and enjoys a new life in a
> >metaphorical heaven. You can't ignore what happens after Kelvin
> >decides to give up his life.
> >It's a ghost story, Peter. A ghost story with heaven tacked on. It
> >isn't tragedy. It isn't realism. It's just a lot of emotional goo.
> Well, for one, I would have no problem if the story was a "ghost story." One
> of the greatest works of literature ever, "Hamlet," is - on some level - a
> "ghost story."
Well, you may be overlooking a few problems with this particular ghost
story. First, the ghost story portion of Solaris is not a highly
literary, Shakespearean-level ghost story; it is a pandering,
Hollywood style ghost story with the same level of sophistication of
the schmaltzy film Ghost. (I'm not saying I didn't enjoy Ghost: how
could I help enjoying a film with a hero named Sam Wheat?) Second,
the ghost story in Solaris is an incongruous fantasy ending tacked
onto a previously serious (if boring) story. The ghost story ending
corrupts the serious story that preceded it. Third, the ghost story
is used here for a base purpose: to glorify suicide.
> I really have not re-written the literal events of the ending. Kelvin is
> clearly seen exiting the pod Gordon is departing in. He leaves for the ship,
> which is seen from an exterior shot to be plummeting to Solaris. We don't see
> his death, but we can reasonably assume he has died. We then see him
> inhabiting an enviroment generated by the planet, reunited with Rheya2. It is
> here where we depart, as you see this as a gooey romantic wish fulfillment, > and I see it as a sort of tragedy when one gets beyond the superficial > happiness of Kelvin in the scene.
You rewrote the ending when, originally, you described the SUICIDE as
tragedy. In doing so you, in effect, pretended that the rest of the
ending--the reincarnation and reunion and happily-ever-after
emotionalism--wasn't there. Now you are reinterpreting the tragedy,
pretending to see tragedy in the fact that the happily reunited ghosts
are just ghosts. That fact might take some of the luster off the
reunion but it hardly creates a tragedy.
> >> For two, what Kelvin had given up life >for< is, as I've said, a
> >> patent illusion, albeit a deeply comforting one.
> >
> >Again, you're confusing the real world with the fictional one. What
> >Kelvin gets in the fictional world is not an illusion at all. He has
> >actually been reconstituted as a material being, and so has Rheya.
>
> Yes, they physically exist, but are they the "real" people?
No need to quibble here about what "real" means, because "real" isn't
the issue. I was rebutting your assertion that Rheya is a "patent
illusion." She isn't an illusion at all. She is for practical
purposes a living, intelligent, animated being, a corporeal entity.
She can think, talk, act, hold, love, and respond to love. Kelvin has
not "given up life for . . . a patent illustion." He has given up
life for genuine happiness beyond the grave, and that is exactly what
Soderbergh intended us to see.
Leonard F. Wheat
Aren't you making the same mistake concerning Tarkovsky's film that
Peter Tonguette makes concerning Soderbergh's film? Both of you
replace interpretations intended by filmmaker with your own
ambivalent-to-dour interpretations. Although I found Tarkovsky's
ending depressing, that surely wasn't the reaction Tarkovsky intended.
He wanted to show that Kelvin's encounter with the surrogate Hari
(his wife's name in the first film)had cleansed Kelvin's mind of the
poison put there by Hari's suicide. (A dream in which his mother
washes away his dirt, dirt symbolizing tormenting thoughts of Hari,
portrays this cleansing.) The cleansing creates a new, emotionally
healthy Kelvin. This Kelvin can once again see the beauty of life and
the need to overcome estrangement. It is too late to overcome the
estrangement with Hari, but Kelvin's estranged father becomes a
surrogate for the estranged wife. Tarkovsky's ending depicts the
overcoming of estrangement: Kelvin is reunited with his father--and
with the beauty of nature, which symbolizes the beauty of life.
You and I can see some problems with this ending, but what we see and
what Tarkovsky wanted us to see are two different things. A review by
Doug Cummings makes some useful points in this regard:
"[Lem's] book . . . is . . . essentially a critique of anthropocentric
thinking [thinking that can understand alien life only if that life
resembles human life]." The book is thus a CRITICISM of human values.
"Tarkovsky's film, by contrast, is a CELEBRATION of human values and
of the power of love . . . , and it is little wonder that Lem took
such exception to the results. Almost the first third of the film is
taken up with a lovingly detailed presentation of the natural beauty
of the earth that Kris may be leaving forever. . . . Indeed,
Tarkovsky's trademark images (water, trees, horses and dogs, rural
settings) and themes (the importance of home, art, and spiritual
regeneration) are at the heart of his film's meaning, which begins
with a distraught relationship between Kris and his father and ends
with their embrace. . . . Tarkovsky keeps the scientific nature of
Solaris a complete enigma and uses it purely as a mysterious force
which propels and mediates Kris' spiritual regeneration."
Cummings is pointing out that Tarkovsky's movie is about Kris Kelvin's
spiritual generation. He begins estranged not only from his father
but from the beauty of the earth. Rain falling on Kris symbolizes the
gloom and isolation that pervade Kris's psyche as he prepares to leave
earth. The end begins with rain--more gloom--dripping on his father.
Then the father comes out, father and son embrace, the sun comes out,
and the natural beauty of the earth again comes into view. And the
force that brings this all about is Kris's realization of the depth of
his love for Hari. The movie is about the healing power of love; it
is a love story, one that features a dark cloud with a silver lining.
This is what Tarkovsky wanted us to see.
We both saw subtle problems that constituted blemishes in the artist's
painting. But we weren't supposed to see those blemishes. I doubt
that Tarkovsky realized they were there, but if he did he surely hoped
we wouldn't see them. So, to state the film's problem mildly, the
ending was indeed "ambivalent" (your word). And to state the problem
less delicately, it was "depressing" (my word).
Also, as Cummings shows, the film is deeply in conflict with the
science fiction theme that Lem was presenting.
> Tarkovsky's Solaris has two important themes: can we make contact with
> an inhuman cosmos? and, Can we face up to our desire (which is the
> secret of what we are)?
I can't agree that these are Tarkovsky's themes. See Cummings points
above, with which I agree.
> For Tarkovsky, the two themes are intimately related. Contact with the
> alien is only possible when we have first understood our own desires.
Tarkovsky has no interest in Lem's theme of contact with aliens that
are not anthropomorphic beings, beings with traits we can relate to.
Tarkovsky has replaced Lem's themes with his own.
PT Caffey
> Why do I prefer a return-to-earth ending to a suicide ending (without
> regard to what comes after the suicide)? Because I prefer behavior
> that exhibits emotional maturity, acceptance of life's disappointments
> and tragedies, and concern for the effects of one's actions on
> friends, colleagues, and the general public. Regarding the last
> point--the effects of one's actions--Kelvin was sent to Solaris to
> learn what was going on there and to provide his superiors with vital
> information. Kelvin had a professional obligation to complete his
> mission and, in doing so, to contribute to the base of scientific
> knowledge about the planet. Am I to admire or feel empathy towards a
> person who turns his back on his responsibilities to engage in
> self-centered behavior?
>
grand scientific aims of the "mission" having been subsumed under the
profit motives of its new corporate operators, who are primarily
concerned with secrecy and public relations. Kelvin takes the journey
on behalf of his close friend, Gibarian, and not out of any perceived
loyalty to Space Station Enron.
(2) Fiction, in all its guises, affords us the opportunity to
tentatively extend our sympathies, through exercise of our
imaginations, to characters who represent the least among us and who,
through these representations of weakness, most fully embody the flaws
and contradictions inherent in human nature. Are we now to deny these
dramatis personae our sympathies because they misbehave? Is Hamlet to
be put to bed without supper? Will Captain Ahab be forced to perform
community service until he more fully appreciates the effects of his
actions on others? Should we shut the door on Michael Corleone,
leaving him to bear the desolate chill alone? Do we deny ourselves
the charm of Harry Lime because he's "bad"? This is absurdity. To
empathize with the human elements in a flawed hero--or even in a
monster--is not to admire his conduct. We can, at the same time,
disdain Colonel Nicholson's cooperation with his Japanese captors
while understanding, in an emotional sense, the great pride he takes
in his men's acccomplishment. We can feel sorry that Harry Lime's
time has come while knowing, as he does, that come it muddily must.
Drama thrives on emotional immaturity and the raging rejection of
life's petty taunts. Protagonists such as Kelvin seldom go gentle.
(3) Kevlin couldn't "return to earth," even if he tried. From the
start, his heart and mind were already adrift on Solaris; only his
body had yet to get the news.
PT Caffey
mark de rozario
> ma...@diskontent.net (mark de rozario) wrote in message news:<ca59a535.02120...@posting.google.com>...
> > lenw...@earthlink.net (Leonard F. Wheat) wrote in message news:<b5f71a25.02120...@posting.google.com>...
>
> > Did Tarkovsky think the ending 'uplifting'? I have never viewed it as
> > such, for precisely the reasons you indicate. It always struck me as
> > deeply ambivalent.
>
> Aren't you making the same mistake concerning Tarkovsky's film that
> Peter Tonguette makes concerning Soderbergh's film? Both of you
> replace interpretations intended by filmmaker with your own
> ambivalent-to-dour interpretations.
Even if that is so, I don't think it invalidates the interpretation.
Tarkovsky's alleged intentions are a factor, but not the ultimately
decisive one; to say they are would be to fall into the intentionalist
fallacy. The fact that what is on screen jars with what you are
calling Tarkovsky's intentions proves this.
>Although I found Tarkovsky's
> ending depressing, that surely wasn't the reaction Tarkovsky intended.
> He wanted to show that Kelvin's encounter with the surrogate Hari
> (his wife's name in the first film)had cleansed Kelvin's mind of the
> poison put there by Hari's suicide. (A dream in which his mother
> washes away his dirt, dirt symbolizing tormenting thoughts of Hari,
> portrays this cleansing.) The cleansing creates a new, emotionally
> healthy Kelvin. This Kelvin can once again see the beauty of life and
> the need to overcome estrangement. It is too late to overcome the
> estrangement with Hari, but Kelvin's estranged father becomes a
> surrogate for the estranged wife. Tarkovsky's ending depicts the
> overcoming of estrangement: Kelvin is reunited with his father--and
> with the beauty of nature, which symbolizes the beauty of life.
But, you've shown yourself that the ending does not depict the
overcoming of estrangement. At best, it has shown Kelvin's recognition
of the need to overcome estrangement. How could it be anything more?
>
> You and I can see some problems with this ending, but what we see and
> what Tarkovsky wanted us to see are two different things. A review by
> Doug Cummings makes some useful points in this regard:
I agree Cummings makes some useful points, but on what grounds can he
be allowed to speak for Tarkovsky's intentions?
>
> "[Lem's] book . . . is . . . essentially a critique of anthropocentric
> thinking [thinking that can understand alien life only if that life
> resembles human life]." The book is thus a CRITICISM of human values.
> "Tarkovsky's film, by contrast, is a CELEBRATION of human values and
> of the power of love . . . , and it is little wonder that Lem took
> such exception to the results. Almost the first third of the film is
> taken up with a lovingly detailed presentation of the natural beauty
> of the earth that Kris may be leaving forever. . . . Indeed,
> Tarkovsky's trademark images (water, trees, horses and dogs, rural
> settings) and themes (the importance of home, art, and spiritual
> regeneration) are at the heart of his film's meaning, which begins
> with a distraught relationship between Kris and his father and ends
> with their embrace. . . . Tarkovsky keeps the scientific nature of
> Solaris a complete enigma and uses it purely as a mysterious force
> which propels and mediates Kris' spiritual regeneration."
I think this does bring out very well a tension between Tarkovsky and
Lem, and does demonstrate why Lem was unhappy with what Tarkovsky
produced. But I think the opposition rests on a misconception: that
Tarkovsky is an advocate of 'human' values. Why is 'natural beauty' a
human value? Tarkovsky's whole career is a critique of
anthropocentrism. As Cummings points out, Tarkovsky's 'trademark
images' are 'water, trees, horses, dogs, rural settings', in other
words, matter, animals and landscapes: the cosmos. Tarkovsky's
critique of science fiction is that it, too, rests on anthropocentric
premisses. It overlooks the alien wonder of the cosmos all around us
in favour of a quasi-imperialistic quest to conquer more space.
Estrangement is indeed the problem: but that estangement is precisely
a _consequence_ of an anthropocentric separation of the human from the
cosmos around it.
>
> Cummings is pointing out that Tarkovsky's movie is about Kris Kelvin's
> spiritual generation. He begins estranged not only from his father
> but from the beauty of the earth. Rain falling on Kris symbolizes the
> gloom and isolation that pervade Kris's psyche as he prepares to leave
> earth. The end begins with rain--more gloom--dripping on his father.
Rain correlates with many things in Tarkovsky; I think it is reductive
to equate it with gloom alone. And - to invoke a debate currently
running on other threads on AMK - I think we have to be careful when
attributing symbols, especially symbols which are held to have one
meaning alone, to Tarkovsky's work. Tarkovsky's spirituality - if that
is what it is - is unlike Western European models of the spiritual,
with their Platonic/ Cartesian downplaying of matter in favour of some
nonextended, eternal substance. Rain, water, fire: Tarkovsky's
spirituality is always intensely material. It is not just a case of
material processes 'standing in' for 'spiritual' states; they are
those states.
> Then the father comes out, father and son embrace, the sun comes out,
> and the natural beauty of the earth again comes into view. And the
> force that brings this all about is Kris's realization of the depth of
> his love for Hari. The movie is about the healing power of love; it
> is a love story, one that features a dark cloud with a silver lining.
> This is what Tarkovsky wanted us to see.
>
> We both saw subtle problems that constituted blemishes in the artist's
> painting. But we weren't supposed to see those blemishes.
How do you know? If Tarkovsky had intended the film to end with
reconciliation, why did he not simply have Kelvin return to earth? I
don't believe an artist of Tarkovsky's intelligence would be unaware
of the ambivalences of this ending. Couldn't you be confusing your -
rather straightforward and simplistic - interpretation of the ending
with Tarkovky's intention? (Always bearing in mind my comments on
intention above.)
>I doubt
> that Tarkovsky realized they were there, but if he did he surely hoped
> we wouldn't see them. So, to state the film's problem mildly, the
> ending was indeed "ambivalent" (your word). And to state the problem
> less delicately, it was "depressing" (my word).
>
> Also, as Cummings shows, the film is deeply in conflict with the
> science fiction theme that Lem was presenting.
It depends what you mean by science fiction. You could either see
Tarkovksy's film as anti-science fiction, or as a critique of sf which
could open up new possibilities for the genre.
>
> > Tarkovsky's Solaris has two important themes: can we make contact with
> > an inhuman cosmos? and, Can we face up to our desire (which is the
> > secret of what we are)?
>
> I can't agree that these are Tarkovsky's themes. See Cummings points
> above, with which I agree.
Well, as I have tried to show, I think Cummings is mistaken in
thinking that 'natural beauty' - or even the power of love for that
matter - are 'human values.' For Tarkovsky, they are - for want of a
better term - 'religious' values. Tarkovsky's religion is neither
supernatural nor human-centred: to attain the religious humans must
move beyond their anthropocentric, somnambulistic assumption that they
are at the centre of things.
>
> > For Tarkovsky, the two themes are intimately related. Contact with the
> > alien is only possible when we have first understood our own desires.
>
> Tarkovsky has no interest in Lem's theme of contact with aliens that
> are not anthropomorphic beings, beings with traits we can relate to.
> Tarkovsky has replaced Lem's themes with his own.
I don't think he has replaced, so much as displaced, Lem's themes.
Tarkovsky, it is true, has no interest in contact with alien beings.
But all his work is based upon establishing contact with an alien
cosmos. Such a cosmos, so empirically close at hand, is also terribly
distant from us.
Padraig L Henry
Wheat) wrote:
>
>Why do I prefer a return-to-earth ending to a suicide ending (without
>regard to what comes after the suicide)? Because I prefer behavior
>that exhibits emotional maturity,
You sure have a strange notion of emotional maturity, repeatedly using
such derogatory, dismissive terms as " just so much emotional pap",
"happily-ever-after emotionalism", engaging in "self-centered
behavior", and "a pandering, Hollywood style ghost story." Oh, this is
emotional "maturity":
>acceptance of life's disappointments
>and tragedies, and concern for the effects of one's actions on
>friends, colleagues, and the general public. Regarding the last
>point--the effects of one's actions--Kelvin was sent to Solaris to
>learn what was going on there and to provide his superiors with vital
>information. Kelvin had a professional obligation to complete his
>mission and, in doing so, to contribute to the base of scientific
>knowledge about the planet. Am I to admire or feel empathy towards a
>person who turns his back on his responsibilities to engage in
>self-centered behavior?
Emotional maturity entails rejecting all genuine human emotions and
meekly subscribing to the demands of an authoritarian technocracy, of
"getting with the program"??? Thought so ... Empathy only for the
reductive scientist who does what he's told.
>Conversely, I have a low regard for suicide and an even lower regard
>for fictional suicides that lack the contextual elements needed to
>turn routine suicide into a deeper sort of tragedy.
Aren't you, er, letting your moral judgement here get in the way of
your better "objective" scientific analysis?
BTW, Numerous Hollywood films glorify and romanticise suicidal escape;
its a growing "theme" within contemporary American culture. From
Ridley Scott (the suicide ending of Thelma and Louise, with both
characters freeze-framed into a celluloid infinity of blissful
suicidal escape) to Terminator 2 and Alien 3 etc. You comparing
Solaris with these? Or with the very different treatment of "suicide"
in such films as The Thin Red Line and Full Metal Jacket?
>
>> >It's a ghost story, Peter. A ghost story with heaven tacked on. It
>> >isn't tragedy. It isn't realism. It's just a lot of emotional goo.
You have a problem with ghost stories, then. Didn't like The Shining,
then, or Lem's novel, or Tarkovsky's film, given that all have
supernatural themes? Or is it that a novel or film isn't really a
"ghost story" but only a "serious work" if its supernatural elements
can be suitably rationalised by sufficiently credible
pseudo-scientific "explanation"? (Lem's novel, unlike Tarkovsky's
film, doesn't have a tragic ending, but a positivist rationalist and
pragmatic one. But maybe that's tragic too :-)).
>Well, you may be overlooking a few problems with this particular ghost
>story. First, the ghost story portion of Solaris is not a highly
>literary, Shakespearean-level ghost story; it is a pandering,
>Hollywood style ghost story with the same level of sophistication of
>the schmaltzy film Ghost. (I'm not saying I didn't enjoy Ghost: how
>could I help enjoying a film with a hero named Sam Wheat?) Second,
>the ghost story in Solaris is an incongruous fantasy ending tacked
>onto a previously serious (if boring) story. The ghost story ending
>corrupts the serious story that preceded it. Third, the ghost story
>is used here for a base purpose: to glorify suicide.
But it would be an okay purpose if it romanticised and glorified the
cause of "serious" technocratic science instead? :-)
Padraig
dutch_angle
> metaphor for paradigms in the Kuhnian sense in general, both in the
> narrow scientific sense and the broader way in which it sometimes
> generalized to the humanities.
Before I duck, what exactly are "paradigms in the Kuhnian sense in general"?
And what is the "narrow scientific sense"?
And what do you mean with "the broader way"?
d.a. (the Dutch guy)
dutch_angle
> to equate it with gloom alone. And - to invoke a debate currently
> running on other threads on AMK - I think we have to be careful when
> attributing symbols, especially symbols which are held to have one
> meaning alone, to Tarkovsky's work. Tarkovsky's spirituality - if that
> is what it is - is unlike Western European models of the spiritual,
> with their Platonic/ Cartesian downplaying of matter in favour of some
> nonextended, eternal substance. Rain, water, fire: Tarkovsky's
> spirituality is always intensely material. It is not just a case of
> material processes 'standing in' for 'spiritual' states; they are
> those states.
Tarkovsky said that he was really desperate at being asked questions
by critics and filmstudents about the supposed "symbolic" elements in
his films.
Indeed, "they are those states"; I think he could agree with that.
d.a.
Leonard F. Wheat
> lenw...@earthlink.net (Leonard F. Wheat) wrote in message .
> >
> > Why do I prefer a return-to-earth ending to a suicide ending (without
> > regard to what comes after the suicide)? Because I prefer behavior
> > that exhibits emotional maturity, acceptance of life's disappointments
> > and tragedies, and concern for the effects of one's actions on
> > friends, colleagues, and the general public. Regarding the last
> > point--the effects of one's actions--Kelvin was sent to Solaris to
> > learn what was going on there and to provide his superiors with vital
> > information. Kelvin had a professional obligation to complete his
> > mission and, in doing so, to contribute to the base of scientific
> > knowledge about the planet. Am I to admire or feel empathy towards a
> > person who turns his back on his responsibilities to engage in
> > self-centered behavior?
> (1) The "professional obligations" in Solaris are clearly trivial, any
> grand scientific aims of the "mission" having been subsumed under the
> profit motives of its new corporate operators, who are primarily
> concerned with secrecy and public relations. Kelvin takes the journey
> on behalf of his close friend, Gibarian, and not out of any perceived
> loyalty to Space Station Enron.
Your attempt to cast the space station as some sort of villain
("Enron") reflects a poor grasp of the plot. A better metaphor for
the space station would be Wake Island, under siege and with Pat
O'Brien (Clooney) fighting desperately to save it from the Japanese
(the "visitors"). After all, wasn't Clooney given O'Brien's role
because Clooney is Irish?
As for Kelvin's professional obligations, their being "trivial" in the
plot context is beside the point. I was asked why I would have
preferred to have Kelvin return to earth. I responded, "Because I
prefer behavior that exhibits
emotional maturity, acceptance of life's disappointments and
tragedies, and concern for the effects of one's actions on friends,
colleagues, and the general public." This is an answer to a question,
not a comment on the plot or on what is important to the plot.
I should add that I'm not at all sure Kelvin's sponsor is "corporate"
or scheming. Perhaps you're right about this--perhaps I missed some
detail at the beginning of the film--but my impression is that
Kelvin's sponsor is a government agency. At any rate, that was the
case in Lem's novel and Tarkovsky's film. And if Soderbergh has
replaced an agency with a corporation, he has done so pointlessly,
because the sponsor's identity has no bearing on the rest of the film.
Contrary to what you seem to believe, the villain here is not
Kelvin's sponsor. It is Kelvin's psyche.
> (2) Fiction, in all its guises, affords us the opportunity to
> tentatively extend our sympathies, through exercise of our
> imaginations, to characters who represent the least among us and who,
> through these representations of weakness, most fully embody the flaws
> and contradictions inherent in human nature. Are we now to deny these
> dramatis personae our sympathies because they misbehave? Is Hamlet to
> be put to bed without supper?
You are confusing "opportunity" with obligation. Yes, fiction does
afford us the opportunity to extend our sympathies to weak characters.
But no, we are not obligated to avail ourselves of every such
opportunity. Did you feel sympathetic toward the Nazi major (what was
his name?) in Casablanca? Were you sympathetic toward Wilson (Jack
Palance) in Shane or to the three outlaws in High Noon? To the wicked
witch in Snow White? To the prejudiced townspeople in To Kill a
Mockingbird? I suggest that you choose your sympathies and let me
choose mine. I could extend sympathy to and support for a person
painfully dying of cancer who commits suicide under the aegis of
Oregon's assisted suicide law, but please don't tell me I should be
sympathetic toward a man who commits suicide because he has been
reminded of what his wife did ten years ago.
> (3) Kevlin couldn't "return to earth," even if he tried. From the
> start, his heart and mind were already adrift on Solaris; only his
> body had yet to get the news.
What an absurd thing to say. All Kelvin had to do to return to earth
was climb into the shuttle. The impenetrable barrier you think he
faced didn't exist until the moment he turned back and sat down to
die. It was at that point that Soderbergh revealed the full depth of
Kelvin's despair. Soderbergh could just as easily have revealed
emotional maturity on the part of Kelvin by having Kelvin step into
the shuttle.
You say, "from the start, his heart and mind were already adrift on
Solaris." Again, that's absurd. His heart and mind went adrift when
Rheya popped up on Solaris and dredged up buried psychological trauma.
And even if his heart and mind had been adrift from the start, that
would have been no barrier to his returning. Kelvin "had" to commit
suicide only because that's the way Soderbergh wrote the script.
Leonard F. Wheat
> >Why do I prefer a return-to-earth ending to a suicide ending (without
> >regard to what comes after the suicide)? Because I prefer behavior
> >that exhibits emotional maturity, acceptance of life's disappoiintments
> >and tragedies, and concern for the effects of one's actions on friends,
> >colleagues,and the general public.
> You sure have a strange notion of emotional maturity, repeatedly using
> such derogatory, dismissive terms as " just so much emotional pap",
> "happily-ever-after emotionalism", engaging in "self-centered
> behavior", and "a pandering, Hollywood style ghost story." Oh, this is
> emotional "maturity":
If I read you correctly, you think rejection of suicide does not
reflect emotional maturity, whereas I think it does. Indeed, you
think that facing life's problems rather than using death as an escape
is a "strange" approach to life, or at any rate that it is "strange"
to think this is the case. To each his own. Those who read our words
can judge for themselves whose view is more acceptable.
> >acceptance of life's disappointments
> >and tragedies, and concern for the effects of one's actions on
> >friends, colleagues, and the general public. Regarding the last
> >point--the effects of one's actions--Kelvin was sent to Solaris to
> >learn what was going on there and to provide his superiors with vital
> >information. Kelvin had a professional obligation to complete his
> >mission and, in doing so, to contribute to the base of scientific
> >knowledge about the planet. Am I to admire or feel empathy towards a
> >person who turns his back on his responsibilities to engage in
> >self-centered behavior?
>
> Emotional maturity entails rejecting all genuine human emotions and
> meekly subscribing to the demands of an authoritarian technocracy, of
> "getting with the program"???
Like Peter Tonguette, you display the insecure debater's habit of
placing words in other persons' mouths--words intended to make the
other persons seem foolish. You are fully aware I neither said nor
implied "emotional maturity entail rejecting all genuine human
emotions" and that I never even commented on the subject of "the
demands of an authoritarian technocracy." But you'd like for people
to think otherwise, so you deliberately paraphrase me falsely.
Tell me, Padraig, since when did rejection of one particular human
emotion, the impulse to commit suicide, amount to "rejecting ALL
genuine human emotions"? And how did you acquire this silly habit of
generalizing from one example. If the first Newfoundland dog you ever
saw was solid black, would you conclude that all Newfoundlands are
black? Apparently you would. Such shallow thinking!
> >Conversely, I have a low regard for suicide and an even lower regard
> >for fictional suicides that lack the contextual elements needed to
> >turn routine suicide into a deeper sort of tragedy.
> BTW, Numerous Hollywood films glorify and romanticise suicidal escape;
> its a growing "theme" within contemporary American culture. From
> Ridley Scott (the suicide ending of Thelma and Louise, with both
> characters freeze-framed into a celluloid infinity of blissful
> suicidal escape) to Terminator 2 and Alien 3 etc. You comparing
> Solaris with these? Or with the very different treatment of "suicide"
> in such films as The Thin Red Line and Full Metal Jacket?
Why don't you stop hinting, Padraig, and learn to express yourself
clearly. Is it your point that five solid black Newfoundland dogs
prove that All Newfoundlands are solid black? That certainly seems to
be your point, and if I'm misinterpreting you then you'd better learn
to say what you mean.
I haven't even seen most of the films that you say glorify suicide and
that you apparently believe do so justifiably. But for purposes of
argument, I'm willing to assume that the Thelma and Louise context
justifies suicide. Does that prove that ALL film suicides deserve to
be glorified and romantisized? Would ten justifiable suicides prove
that the eleventh was justified?
Meanwhile, you are blithely ignoring the last part of my sentence that
you are challenging. I refer to "fictional suicides that lack the
contextual elements needed to turn routine suicide into a deeper sort
of tragedy." That phrase is a qualifier. It says which fictional
suicides lack the features necessary to qualify as tragedy. You
somehow manage to misinterpret plain English by implying that I wrote
that fictional suicide NEVER qualifies as tragedy. Once again,
Padraig, you are putting words in someone else's mouth. Unable to
rebut what was actually said, you rebut a straw man that you yourself
built.
> >> >It's a ghost story, Peter. A ghost story with heaven tacked on. It
> >> >isn't tragedy. It isn't realism. It's just a lot of emotional goo.
>
> You have a problem with ghost stories, then. [You]Didn't like The Shining,
> then,
Yet again (for a third time), Padraig, you are putting words in my
mouth. Because I don't like a particular ghost-story ending tacked
onto an up-to-that-point serious plot, you conclude that I "have a
problem with ghost stories," meaning that I dislike ALL ghost stories.
Here you are again generalizing from one example, in effect claiming
that one black Newfoundland proves that all Newfoundlands are black.
If you read the next paragraph of the post you are replying to, you
will find where I say that some ghost stories are enjoyable and that I
particularly liked Ghost. I add the following quip: "How could I help
enjoying a film with a hero named Sam Wheat?" I also liked The Ghost
and Mrs. Muir and Blithe Spirit. And, though I'm not a fan of
Shakespeare, I think his ghosts serve their purpose extremely well.
So tell me, Padraig, what sort of twisted reasoning led you to your
absurd conclusion that my rejection of Soderbergh's ending implied
that that rejection was based on the premise that ALL ghost stories
are bad?
> >Well, you may be overlooking a few problems with this particular ghost
> >story. First, the ghost story portion of Solaris is not a highly
> >literary, Shakespearean-level ghost story; it is a pandering,
> >Hollywood style ghost story with the same level of sophistication of
> >the schmaltzy film Ghost. (I'm not saying I didn't enjoy Ghost: how
> >could I help enjoying a film with a hero named Sam Wheat?) Second,
> >the ghost story in Solaris is an incongruous fantasy ending tacked
> >onto a previously serious (if boring) story. The ghost story ending
> >corrupts the serious story that preceded it. Third, the ghost story
> >is used here for a base purpose: to glorify suicide.
> But it would be an okay purpose if it romanticised and glorified the
> cause of "serious" technocratic science instead? :-)
And now for a fourth time you are putting words in my mouth. You
really are insecure, Padraig. Unable to rebut my real argument, you
attribute to me a silly argument that poses less of a challenge to
your intellectual faculties.
mark de rozario
> > Tarkovsky's Solaris has two important themes: can we make contact with
> > an inhuman cosmos?
>
> I wouldn't put it this way, because this implies a (too) strict
> scientific quest that would be answered with either a yes or a no,
> whereas I think Tarkovsky aims at a far deeper level;
No, not at all. It is the idea that making contact with the cosmos is
a 'scientific' - rather than a 'spiritual' - quest that Tarkovsky
rejects. Kelvin's mistake, at least in the early part of the film, is
his positivistic assumption that you can learn about the cosmos in
some disinterested way.
>the "cosmos" as
> the "outside world" obviously mirrors the "inside world", our own
> individual world, our conscience, our mental crisis, our own "cosmos".
O dear, I think we are going to have our interiority/ exteriority
'discussion' yet again. To say that the cosmos 'mirrors' our internal
world would be to buy into the anthropocentric worldview that I
believe Tarkovsky is questioning. Landscape, the elements, animals:
they are not symbols of internal psychological states. They are
genuinely exterior and to make contact is to open ourselves to this
Outside.
> For me, the search for knowledge into the depths of the outside world,
> as far as deep space, is contrasted with it's immediate opposite
> quest, the quest for self-knowledge; in Tarkovsky's Solaris, this is
> most significantly layed out by the development of Kelvin's character,
> a man that at first doesn't seem to acknowledge, or think much and
> therefore denies, human emotion. Within the chaotic labyrintian arena
> of the space station, with it's curved corridors, he's after some
> scientific and psychological truth of what has happened to it's
> inhabitants but he becomes more and more confronted with his own past.
Agreed.
> Therefore, I don't think that Tarkovsky really is interested in
> whether we can make contact with an inhuman cosmos or not; the way he
> establishes the cosmos serves the purpose of further developing the
> inner quest, a spiritual search for the human spirit; what makes us
> human?
But aren't his films critical of humanism? His films are all about
entering into composition with the nonhuman, becoming-animal,
becoming-landscape, becoming-water. This is what, for instance, the
Stalker can do, but the humanists (the writer, the scientist) cannot.
> > and, Can we face up to our desire (which is the
> > secret of what we are)?
>
> This question for me is too simple as well. What is firmly connected
> with the contrast of both the "outside" and "inside" quest for
> knowledge, is the question: what are the consequences of facing up
> with our desires, our longing to reconcile with the ghosts of our
> past, which, in a way, are defining our identity, "who we are".
That's what I meant.
>
> Because of this, I think, the film's prologue and epilogue are very
> important. With the prologue these themes are already introduced
> through the confrontation with a former friend, the astronaut Berton
> and with Kelvin's father; in this prologue it becomes clear how Kelvin
> denies (seems to deny) human emotion, how the "humanity" within
> himself has already stiffened. The conflict with his father further
> deepens this introduction, that in itself is obviously related to
> reality, within the boundaries of Kelvin's "birthplace", his roots.
> The epilogue is a devastating contrast, because it at once confirms
> the impossibility of a "second chance" as well as the unreality of
> Kelvin's "return" to his own roots, his past, and his reconciliation
> with this past, with his father.
Quite.
>
> All of this, and especially the way Tarkovsky develops these themes
> through a series of discomforting and painful confrontations, in a
> purely cinematic way, makes his film superior to Soderbergh's remake.
> It is Tarkovsky, not Soderbergh, who really reaches the depth of the
> human soul.
>
>
> > These two themes recur in Stalker, where the
> > travelers into the Zone prove ultimately unable to do either. In both
> > Solaris and Stalker, what seems at first sight to be a fairy tale
> > granter of wishes (the sentient ocean, the Room) ends up as tormenting
> > challenge, holding up terrifying mirrors to the reality of human
> > desire.
> >
> > For Tarkovsky, the two themes are intimately related. Contact with the
> > alien is only possible when we have first understood our own desires.
> > To that extent, Solaris, like Stalker, is a critique of science
> > fiction, and of the positivist, objectivist model of enquiry that
> > often underpins it, with its assumption that the universe can be
> > understood independently of desire. There can be no possibility of
> > encounter with the alien, by definition, while we remain within the
> > web of presuppositions that organise experience for us. Such
> > presuppositions trap the alien just as surely as they trap us.
>
> I don't think that "the alien" is that important for Tarkovsky.
It depends what you mean by 'alien' really. Tarkovsky is uninterested,
it is true, in the traditional science fiction sense of the alien. But
the alien in the sense of the wondrous, the awesome, the novel, the
unfamiliar - that alien is everywhere in Tarkovsky; it is what we need
to reattune ourselves to, what we have lost contact with. This alien
is locked within the 'familiar'; or rather, our routinized perceptions
conceal and occlude it.
>It is
> the eternal quest for knowledge that causes the tragedy, according to
> Tarkovsky. The way he uses technology and establishes it through the
> design of, for instance, the space station, causes a sense of "death"
> and "self destruction", whereas the projection of Kelvin's inner
> world, his mental crisis so to speak, causes a far more faithful,
> hopeful human presence, through the character of Khari, Kelvin's dead
> wife; the more Kelvin acknowledges her, the more he acknowledges the
> ghosts of his past, the more human she becomes; this causes her to
> realise how she cannot be and will never be his beloved wife. The
> result of all of these (self-) confrontation is the revival of the
> human within Kelvin, his "humanity". As if Tarvovsky tells us to go
> searching within the depths of ourselves, and not expect much of the
> quest in deep space, in the cosmos; the mystery of the cosmos is
> within ourselves. We are able to "find" only if we have faith and are
> able to gain or regain a belief in the spiritual.
>
You could say, with more justification in my view, that our selves are
out there in the cosmos.
Ironically, given your loathing of 'symbols', I think you are in
danger of treating much in Tarkovsky as 'symbolic' of internal
psychological states. Tarkovsky's preoccupation with landscape should
be taken at face value. The assumption of an interior subjective space
_separate_ from an 'external' world of quantifiable extended space is
just as much a part of Kelvin's worldview as is his blithe confidence
that 'knowledge' of the cosmos is simply a question of applying
scientific logic. Kelvin's _affective _ indifference to the external
world is part of the same condition which numbs him to his supposedly
'inner' psychological past. The idea that the cosmos is an inert
'object' of knowledge is clearly under attack in both Solaris and
Stalker: what the ocean and the Zone's investigators cannot deal with
is the fact that their putative objects of study are intensive, rather
than extensive spaces, mutantly in becoming, super-sensitive to the
very presence and affective state of their human explorers. Yet just
as there is no ontologically independent object of knowledge, there is
no subject of knowledge either. The one dissolves with the other. What
replaces them are subtle fields of engagement, landscapes,
singularities, in which the human is always becoming-something else.
> > That is why, for me at least, the ending of Tarkovsky's Solaris is
> > profoundly ambivalent: has Kelvin reconciled himself with the
> > impossibility of escaping from his own desiring-economy? Has he
> > accepted that he must come to terms with himself and his past before
> > he can encounter the Outside? Or is he falling, once again, into the
> > terrible seduction of treating the Solaris simulations as if they
> > were 'real'?
>
>
> That is why I don't really think that Tarkovsky thinks the ending of
> his Solaris is "uplifting" (nor "depressing" for that matter), it is a
> little more complex, since it seems to suggest that both the quest
> into the outside and the inside world(s) are like wishful thinking;
> the result of our longing, our desire, our feelings of guilt, shame,
> fantasy, hope, faith etc. However, both in Solaris and in Stalker,
> these quests seem to end in "depression", but the deeper truth, I
> think is that all the main characters do end up with something that is
> essential for human beings; belief, and our conscience, the very
> essence of what makes us human. The travelers in Stalker may not have
> entered the room, but they have "entered" their inner worlds and this
> quest certainly is honored and spiritually rewarded. This is the
> "elixer" of the Searchers in both Solaris and Stalker. (Personally, I
> think the ending of Stalker is more succesful and less a "twist" like
> the ending of Solaris)
Agreed, with the caveat about 'human' mentioned above.
> Soderbergh can never scratch these kind of layers.
I haven't seen the Soderbergh film, but I'm fairly confident - given
his track record -that you are right.
Leonard F. Wheat
> lenw...@earthlink.net (Leonard F. Wheat) wrote in message news:<b5f71a25.02120...@posting.google.com>...
> > ma...@diskontent.net (mark de rozario) wrote in message news:<ca59a535.02120...@posting.google.com>...
> > > lenw...@earthlink.net (Leonard F. Wheat) wrote in message news:<b5f71a25.02120...@posting.google.com>...
> > You and I can see some problems with this ending, but what we see and
> > what Tarkovsky wanted us to see are two different things. A review by
> > Doug Cummings makes some useful points in this regard:
> I agree Cummings makes some useful points, but on what grounds can he
> be allowed to speak for Tarkovsky's intentions?
Although some films (most notably Kubrick's)are indeed hard to
interpret, intelligent reviewers like Cummings--and many intelligent
viewers, for that matter--can certainly recognize the filmmaker's
intentions. Cummings is particularly well qualified in this respect,
because he is familiar with Tarkovsky's other work and with
Tarkovsky's repetitive themes.
Once you've reflected carefully on Tarkovsky's Solaris, it isn't hard
to see that the film shoves Lem's science fiction aside and develops
Tarkovsky's theme of the healing power of love. Kelvin's gradual
recognition of the depth of his love for Hari cleanses his soul and
gives him concomitant recognition of the depth of his love for his
father and for existence (represented by natural beauty--the water,
the horses, the trees, the rural tranquility, etc.). Tarkovsky
clearly intended to show that Kelvin was healed, that his soul was
cleansed. And that implies that Tarkovsky wanted to show Kelvin
achieving reconciliation with his father. Imperfections in
Tarkovsky's ending certainly diluted the message, but Tarkovsky's
intent is plain enough.
The following quotation is from Cummings:
> > "[Lem's] book . . . is . . . essentially a critique of anthropocentric
> > thinking [thinking that can understand alien life only if that life
> > resembles human life]." The book is thus a CRITICISM of human values.
> > "Tarkovsky's film, by contrast, is a CELEBRATION of human values and
> > of the power of love . . . , and it is little wonder that Lem took
> > such exception to the results. Almost the first third of the film is
> > taken up with a lovingly detailed presentation of the natural beauty
> > of the earth that Kris may be leaving forever. . . . Indeed,
> > Tarkovsky's trademark images (water, trees, horses and dogs, rural
> > settings) and themes (the importance of home, art, and spiritual
> > regeneration) are at the heart of his film's meaning, which begins
> > with a distraught relationship between Kris and his father and ends
> > with their embrace. . . . Tarkovsky keeps the scientific nature of
> > Solaris a complete enigma and uses it purely as a mysterious force
> > which propels and mediates Kris' spiritual regeneration."
> I think this does bring out very well a tension between Tarkovsky and
> Lem, and does demonstrate why Lem was unhappy with what Tarkovsky
> produced. But I think the opposition rests on a misconception: that
> Tarkovsky is an advocate of 'human' values. Why is 'natural beauty' a
> human value?
How can you deny or even question the idea that natural beauty is a
human value? Besides, Lem's unhappiness with Tarkovsky's film did not
rest on the idea that Tarkovsky championed the particular human value
of natural beauty. Lem was concerned with, and was objecting to, a
different human value--anthropocentric thinking. Only at the level of
abstraction, which subsumes both natural beauty and anthropocentrism
under the general heading "human values," was Lem opposed to the
championing of human values. I can't believe (can you?) that Lem has
any problem with natural beauty; he just didn't want it to be a theme
of a movie based on his book. He wanted his own theme advanced.
> Tarkovsky's whole career is a critique of
> anthropocentrism. As Cummings points out, Tarkovsky's 'trademark
> images' are 'water, trees, horses, dogs, rural settings', in other
> words, matter, animals and landscapes: the cosmos. Tarkovsky's
> critique of science fiction is that it, too, rests on anthropocentric
> premises. It overlooks the alien wonder of the cosmos all around us
> in favour of a quasi-imperialistic quest to conquer more space.
If I read you correctly, you are saying that appreciation of natural
beauty comes under Lem's heading of anthropocentrism. I certainly
don't claim to know much about Lem's writing--Solaris is the only book
of his I've read--but I have read a little bit about Lem. Both what
I've read and the implausibility of what you've written lead me to
doubt that Lem underappreciates natural beauty. Lem's Solaris is
about anthropocentric conceptions OF ALIEN LIFE existing elsewhere in
the cosmos. He's saying that our inability to analyze alien life in
nonanthropocentric terms dooms to failure our attempts to comprehend
it.
> > Cummings is pointing out that Tarkovsky's movie is about Kris Kelvin's
> > spiritual generation. He begins estranged not only from his father
> > but from the beauty of the earth. Rain falling on Kris symbolizes the
> > gloom and isolation that pervade Kris's psyche as he prepares to leave
> > earth. The end begins with rain--more gloom--dripping on his father.
>
> Rain correlates with many things in Tarkovsky; I think it is reductive
> to equate it with gloom alone.
It may or may not be true that "rain correlates with many things in
Tarkovsky" (i.e., in his entire body of work). If you say that it
does, though, I'll take your word for it. But it doesn't matter what
rain symbolizes in some other film. We're talking about the prologue
and the ending of Solaris. Solaris opens with a bucolic scene
depicting natural beauty, but then suddenly it starts raining. The
context--the circumstances and what follows--make it plain that gloom
has arrived on the scene. I can see no point in Tarkovsky's having it
rain other than the point that the rain represents gloom. The ending,
which begins with the father soaked (literally) with gloom--rain
dripping on him through leaks in the roof--reinforces this
interpretation, as does the lifting of the rain when father and son
embrace.
> > Then the father comes out, father and son embrace, the sun comes out,
> > and the natural beauty of the earth again comes into view. And the
> > force that brings this all about is Kris's realization of the depth of
> > his love for Hari. The movie is about the healing power of love; it
> > is a love story, one that features a dark cloud with a silver lining.
> > This is what Tarkovsky wanted us to see.
> > We both saw subtle problems that constituted blemishes in the artist's
> > painting. But we weren't supposed to see those blemishes.
> How do you know? If Tarkovsky had intended the film to end with
> reconciliation, why did he not simply have Kelvin return to earth? I
> don't believe an artist of Tarkovsky's intelligence would be unaware
> of the ambivalences of this ending.
How do I know Tarkovsky didn't want us to see the ending's blemishes,
assuming that he himself was aware of them? Call it an elementary
understanding of human nature. Why would an artist want you to see
blemishes in his work?
Why didn't Tarkovsky "simply have Kelvin return to earth?" I'd be
willing to bet even money that Tarkovsky's whole concept for the film
centered on the ending he had in mind. Tarkovsky was an artist, and a
darned good one. He had an esthetically brilliant idea for an ending
where the camera climbs slowly into the sky, gradually revealing that
the farm is a reconstituted farm located not on earth but on Solaris.
He obviously wouldn't abandon this concept for love or money.
Unfortunately, this ending imprisons Kelvin on a tiny island on an
alien planet for the rest of his life, and without any possibility of
enjoying most of the things (music, books, human contact, etc.) that
make life enjoyable. Also unfortunately, the ending fails to bring
any satisfaction to Kelvin's father. The real father is back on earth
and probably six feet under at this point. Even if the real father is
still alive, he cannot experience the reconciliation that his double
is experiencing on Solaris. Only the real Kris Kelvin knows the joy
of reconciliation.
Did Tarkovsky recognize these problems? Who knows? I'm inclined to
think that he didn't. But whether he did or didn't doesn't matter.
The point remains that Tarkovsky's ending is seriously flawed. The
healing power of love hasn't gotten Kris very far, and it hasn't
gotten his father on earth anywhere.
> > Also, as Cummings shows, the film is deeply in conflict with the
> > science fiction theme that Lem was presenting.
> It depends what you mean by science fiction. You could either see
> Tarkovksy's film as anti-science fiction, or as a critique of sf which
> could open up new possibilities for the genre.
No, no, absolutely not. Tarkovsky isn't attacking science fiction.
Neither is he attacking Lem's approach to science fiction of Lem's
ideas. Tarkovsky just isn't interested in these things. He has his
own fish to fry--his own themes to develop. He wanted to make a movie
about the healing power of love and about the overcoming of human
estrangement. Lem's novel provided a good setting and a useful
concept (the "visitors") for developing the idea.
> > > Tarkovsky's Solaris has two important themes: can we make contact with
> > > an inhuman cosmos? and, Can we face up to our desire (which is the
> > > secret of what we are)?
> > I can't agree that these are Tarkovsky's themes. See Cummings points
> > above, with which I agree.
>
> Well, as I have tried to show, I think Cummings is mistaken in
> thinking that 'natural beauty' - or even the power of love for that
> matter - are 'human values.' For Tarkovsky, they are - for want of a
> better term - 'religious' values.
We've already covered this ground, or at least the "natural beauty"
part of it, but it seems that my point needs to be repeated. It is
obvious and undeniable by any reasonable person (that makes you
unreasonable--sorry!) that natural beauty is a human value. Granted,
there are lots of humans who show no appreciation of natural beauty,
but most of us do appreciate it. Of course natural beauty is a human
value.
You are closer to the truth when you associate "the power of love"
with religion, although the idea can also be found in many works of
fiction and in nonreligious areas of society. Religion constantly
exalts love and equates God with love ("God is love," whatever that is
supposed to mean). So deeply engrained in religion is the word "love"
that, back in 1963, an atheistic theologian, John A. T. Robinson wrote
HONEST TO GOD, book in which he redefined God as love--and meant it
literally, although many naive readers took him figuratively. But
what difference does it make whether the healing power of love is a
"human value" or a "religious value"? Either way, as Cummings points
out, it is a value espoused by Tarkovsky.
> > Tarkovsky has no interest in Lem's theme of contact with aliens that
> > are not anthropomorphic beings, beings with traits we can relate to.
> > Tarkovsky has replaced Lem's themes with his own.
>
> I don't think he has replaced, so much as displaced, Lem's themes.
> Tarkovsky, it is true, has no interest in contact with alien beings.
Do we really need to get bogged down in semantic issues such as
whether "replaced" or "displaced" is the better word? (It seems to me
that, in the present context, both words convey roughly the same
meaning.) What is essential is that, as you say, Tarkovsky has no
interest in Lem's theme that concerns contact with alien beings.
dutch_angle
> suicide only because that's the way Soderbergh wrote the script.
It's even worse.
Rheya "had" to commit suicide only because that's the way Soderbergh
wrote the script.
d.a.
PT Caffey
<snip>
> > (2) Fiction, in all its guises, affords us the opportunity to
> > tentatively extend our sympathies, through exercise of our
> > imaginations, to characters who represent the least among us and who,
> > through these representations of weakness, most fully embody the flaws
> > and contradictions inherent in human nature. Are we now to deny these
> > dramatis personae our sympathies because they misbehave? Is Hamlet to
> > be put to bed without supper?
>
> You are confusing "opportunity" with obligation. Yes, fiction does
> afford us the opportunity to extend our sympathies to weak characters.
> But no, we are not obligated to avail ourselves of every such
> opportunity. Did you feel sympathetic toward the Nazi major (what was
> his name?) in Casablanca? Were you sympathetic toward Wilson (Jack
> Palance) in Shane or to the three outlaws in High Noon? To the wicked
> witch in Snow White? To the prejudiced townspeople in To Kill a
> Mockingbird?
No, you're quite right; opportunities to engage emotionally with
flawed fictional characters are not yet mandated by law, but I wonder
if you avail yourself of ANY such opportunity? As to you questions...
1) I don't recall any particular sympathy toward Major Strasser, but,
as a rather stock villian, he was never a likely candidate. "Flat"
characters seldom are. I can report, however, a measure of empathy
for Conrad Veidt as Cesare in Caligari.
2) Wilson, in Shane, is an interesting contrast. On the page, he's no
more well-rounded a character than Stasser. But Palance acts the part
so well, and with such devilish glee, that a viewer begins to see just
how godawful those settlers are. In fact, the best screen villians,
those we remember well, boast personalities that repel and attract us
in nearly equal measure. Jack Torrance comes to mind. When he's
lecturing Wendy on why not to interrupt him at the typewriter, whose
point of view do you share? For most of us, I think the answer is
obvious.
3) Except for Tex Ritter's tune, "Do Not Forsake Me, Oh, My Darlin',"
I was never a big fan of High Noon. The characters you mention are,
again, rather flat contrivances of its plot. Not connecting with them
has nothing to do with their "outlaw" status.
4)As for the apple-weilding villian in Snow White, I believe she was
more evil crone than "wicked witch," but, in any case, of course I was
rooting for her! Does anyone not find Snow White herself annoying
beyond belief?
5)To Kill a Mockingbird is a very interesting example because it makes
my point so beautifully. Recall the night scene wherein Atticus Fitch
is guarding his client against a possible lynching. When the mob
surrounds the jail what saves the accused is the little girl, Scout.
She recognizes in the murderous mob townspeople she knows and
respects, normally friendly individuals she probably likes, and she
calls out to them. In her innocence, Scout reminds these potential
killers of their "better angels," in effect shaming them into retreat.
In doing so, she shames everyone who's had a vengeful thought.
> I suggest that you choose your sympathies and let me
> choose mine. I could extend sympathy to and support for a person
> painfully dying of cancer who commits suicide under the aegis of
> Oregon's assisted suicide law, but please don't tell me I should be
> sympathetic toward a man who commits suicide because he has been
> reminded of what his wife did ten years ago.
>
Why shouldn't I? Your bar for earning sympathy must be set strangely
high. You can't muster up any for the ex-cop George C. Scott plays
(he offs himself) in The New Centurions? Or for his portrayal of a
suicidal physician in The Hospital? Or for Harold, of Harold & Maude?
Surely you must have empathy for Maude!
> > (3) Kevlin couldn't "return to earth," even if he tried. From the
> > start, his heart and mind were already adrift on Solaris; only his
> > body had yet to get the news.
>
> What an absurd thing to say. All Kelvin had to do to return to earth
> was climb into the shuttle.
Very amusing, Mr. Wheat. I did not say Kevlin couldn't return to
earth; I said he couldn't "return to earth." Notice the quotation
marks; my use of them should signal to you that I'm using the term as
a metaphor. Kevlin couldn't "return to earth" because, as the opening
of the film so deliberately demonstrates, he had long since abadoned
everything but the mechanical routines of earthly life.
> The impenetrable barrier you think he
> faced didn't exist until the moment he turned back and sat down to
> die. It was at that point that Soderbergh revealed the full depth of
> Kelvin's despair. Soderbergh could just as easily have revealed
> emotional maturity on the part of Kelvin by having Kelvin step into
> the shuttle.
>
If you believe that Soderbergh didn't reveal "the full depth of
Kelvin's despair" until the moment he turned back, then I can see how
shocked you must have been at seeing this heretofore emotionally
healthy guy suddenly fall to pieces. (Hey, Dr. Ross, what gives?!)
Given the utter banality of Kelvin's existence on earth and his
obsession with his own grief, I wasn't so suprised. You think a film
that uses 2001 as an obvious reference point isn't going to trot out
its own form of transformation at the climax? Kevlin's choice was
inevitable.
> You say, "from the start, his heart and mind were already adrift on
> Solaris." Again, that's absurd.
Again, it's a metaphor, Mr. Wheat. Solaris, in this sense, is
Kelvin's roiling unconscious, and he's insufficiently equipped to
surmount the injuries he sustained there. Like Scotty in Vertigo,
Kelvin is psychologically unprepared for a direct psychic assault,
and, again like Scotty, he carries matters over the edge.
> His heart and mind went adrift when
> Rheya popped up on Solaris and dredged up buried psychological trauma.
> And even if his heart and mind had been adrift from the start, that
> would have been no barrier to his returning. Kelvin "had" to commit
> suicide only because that's the way Soderbergh wrote the script.
Yes, and James Stewart should have just calmed down a gosh darn
minute, forgotten all about Madeleine, and considered his professional
obligations to his employer--the gold standard by which all imaginary
people are measured.
PT Caffey
Souls-R-Us
dutch_angle
> > > an inhuman cosmos?
> >
> > I wouldn't put it this way, because this implies a (too) strict
> > scientific quest that would be answered with either a yes or a no,
> > whereas I think Tarkovsky aims at a far deeper level;
>
> No, not at all. It is the idea that making contact with the cosmos is
> a 'scientific' - rather than a 'spiritual' - quest that Tarkovsky
> rejects.
I don't think he rejects a 'scientific' quest; the 'scientific' quest
merely serves the 'spiritual' quest, it goes right along with it.
To 'reject', I think, is, again, too strict.
> Kelvin's mistake, at least in the early part of the film, is
> his positivistic assumption that you can learn about the cosmos in
> some disinterested way.
I wouldn't call that a mistake though.
That is too much a judgement.
Why is Kelvin's assumption that you can learn about the cosmos
positivistic?
And why do you say he does so in a disinterested way?
Doesn't it kind of foreshadow his denial of his own cosmos, his mental
state?
>
> >the "cosmos" as
> > the "outside world" obviously mirrors the "inside world", our own
> > individual world, our conscience, our mental crisis, our own "cosmos".
>
> O dear, I think we are going to have our interiority/ exteriority
> 'discussion' yet again. To say that the cosmos 'mirrors' our internal
> world would be to buy into the anthropocentric worldview that I
> believe Tarkovsky is questioning. Landscape, the elements, animals:
> they are not symbols of internal psychological states. They are
> genuinely exterior and to make contact is to open ourselves to this
> Outside.
And how do we open ourselves to this Outside and how would one
visualize this?
I don't see the inside and outside world as seperate. The landscape,
the elements, animals, they all represent an environment that serves
Kelvin's quest, which first appears to be 'scientific', but becomes
more and more 'spiritual'; the ocean and Solaris mirror interiority
into exteriority. To analyse this process perhaps suggests these
seperate worlds, but they remain firmly connected. Kelvin, because of
the specifics of this environment, is forced to acknowledge the
'inner' cosmos, his own past, his own memories, for instance. Khari,
in Tarkovsky's Solaris, is genuinely exterior and genuinely interior,
because that is how Kelvin's environment, the outside, makes him 'open
up himself'; what is reveals and expresses is really his mental
crisis.
Whether Tarkovsky is questioning the anthropocentric worldview, I
don't know. I don't think that he wants to question 'a worldview', but
rather expresses his own view.
>
>
> > For me, the search for knowledge into the depths of the outside world,
> > as far as deep space, is contrasted with it's immediate opposite
> > quest, the quest for self-knowledge; in Tarkovsky's Solaris, this is
> > most significantly layed out by the development of Kelvin's character,
> > a man that at first doesn't seem to acknowledge, or think much and
> > therefore denies, human emotion. Within the chaotic labyrintian arena
> > of the space station, with it's curved corridors, he's after some
> > scientific and psychological truth of what has happened to it's
> > inhabitants but he becomes more and more confronted with his own past.
>
> Agreed.
>
> > Therefore, I don't think that Tarkovsky really is interested in
> > whether we can make contact with an inhuman cosmos or not; the way he
> > establishes the cosmos serves the purpose of further developing the
> > inner quest, a spiritual search for the human spirit; what makes us
> > human?
>
> But aren't his films critical of humanism? His films are all about
> entering into composition with the nonhuman, becoming-animal,
> becoming-landscape, becoming-water. This is what, for instance, the
> Stalker can do, but the humanists (the writer, the scientist) cannot.
But how does this make Stalker critical of humanism?
I don't think that much about films being "a critique" of something.
I wonder whether that is what filmmakers as Tarkovsky care about.
I think he cares more about expressing his own world-view.
Of course, we are all free to see films as "critiques".
I think Tarkovsky is more making an intense plea for our spiritual
needs, than he is making a "critique"; a "critique" is like a dead-end
street.
For instance, I read somewhere in this newsgroup that Gosford Park is
a "social critique". I really haven't learned or gained a lot from
such a view; a book like Bowling Alone, by Robert D. Putman, is much
more like a social critique to me. Gosford Park didn't really strike
me as a social critique; it was an entertaining film, that used an old
formula, the gathering of people from several "classes", but the
"critique" was rather thin and predictable.
>
> > > and, Can we face up to our desire (which is the
> > > secret of what we are)?
> >
> > This question for me is too simple as well. What is firmly connected
> > with the contrast of both the "outside" and "inside" quest for
> > knowledge, is the question: what are the consequences of facing up
> > with our desires, our longing to reconcile with the ghosts of our
> > past, which, in a way, are defining our identity, "who we are".
>
> That's what I meant.
> >
> > Because of this, I think, the film's prologue and epilogue are very
> > important. With the prologue these themes are already introduced
> > through the confrontation with a former friend, the astronaut Berton
> > and with Kelvin's father; in this prologue it becomes clear how Kelvin
> > denies (seems to deny) human emotion, how the "humanity" within
> > himself has already stiffened. The conflict with his father further
> > deepens this introduction, that in itself is obviously related to
> > reality, within the boundaries of Kelvin's "birthplace", his roots.
> > The epilogue is a devastating contrast, because it at once confirms
> > the impossibility of a "second chance" as well as the unreality of
> > Kelvin's "return" to his own roots, his past, and his reconciliation
> > with this past, with his father.
>
> Quite.
And it's an interesting choice that Tarkovsky first establishes
characters that are firmly connected with the "reality" of Kelvin's
environment, through the conflicts with both Berton and Kelvin's
father, before Kelvins sets out for deep space, where he soon is
entangled in the "unreality" through the (inner) conflict that is
projected into the character of Khari.
Exactly.
>
> >It is
> > the eternal quest for knowledge that causes the tragedy, according to
> > Tarkovsky. The way he uses technology and establishes it through the
> > design of, for instance, the space station, causes a sense of "death"
> > and "self destruction", whereas the projection of Kelvin's inner
> > world, his mental crisis so to speak, causes a far more faithful,
> > hopeful human presence, through the character of Khari, Kelvin's dead
> > wife; the more Kelvin acknowledges her, the more he acknowledges the
> > ghosts of his past, the more human she becomes; this causes her to
> > realise how she cannot be and will never be his beloved wife. The
> > result of all of these (self-) confrontation is the revival of the
> > human within Kelvin, his "humanity". As if Tarvovsky tells us to go
> > searching within the depths of ourselves, and not expect much of the
> > quest in deep space, in the cosmos; the mystery of the cosmos is
> > within ourselves. We are able to "find" only if we have faith and are
> > able to gain or regain a belief in the spiritual.
> >
> You could say, with more justification in my view, that our selves are
> out there in the cosmos.
Not with more justification, I think.
With just as much justification, perhaps.
>
> Ironically, given your loathing of 'symbols', I think you are in
> danger of treating much in Tarkovsky as 'symbolic' of internal
> psychological states.
No, it depends on how you analyse my analysis.
And my analysis can never be 'right'.
I don't use words like 'symbol', because it is of no use at all.
> Tarkovsky's preoccupation with landscape should
> be taken at face value. The assumption of an interior subjective space
> _separate_ from an 'external' world of quantifiable extended space is
> just as much a part of Kelvin's worldview as is his blithe confidence
> that 'knowledge' of the cosmos is simply a question of applying
> scientific logic.
How do you define "face value" here?
As I mentioned above, it isn't my intention to seperate the interior
subjective space from the external world of quantifiable extended
space, to follow your words.
Despite all technology and knowledge of the cosmos, despite applying
scientific logic, all characters in Solaris appear to be disappointed
and depressed, as if they are "killing" the "life" within themselves.
Yet I don't think Tarkovsky is criticizing "technology" or
"knowledge", he merely seems to have found his way of expressing our
need for some spiritual 'goal'. Without this, technology and
scientific quest for knowlegde rather comes across as 'tragic', I
think.
> Kelvin's _affective _ indifference to the external
> world is part of the same condition which numbs him to his supposedly
> 'inner' psychological past. The idea that the cosmos is an inert
> 'object' of knowledge is clearly under attack in both Solaris and
> Stalker: what the ocean and the Zone's investigators cannot deal with
> is the fact that their putative objects of study are intensive, rather
> than extensive spaces, mutantly in becoming, super-sensitive to the
> very presence and affective state of their human explorers. Yet just
> as there is no ontologically independent object of knowledge, there is
> no subject of knowledge either. The one dissolves with the other. What
> replaces them are subtle fields of engagement, landscapes,
> singularities, in which the human is always becoming-something else.
Yes.
And what do you think the travelers in both Solaris and Stalker "can"
deal with, and what do they gain from their quest?
>
> > > That is why, for me at least, the ending of Tarkovsky's Solaris is
> > > profoundly ambivalent: has Kelvin reconciled himself with the
> > > impossibility of escaping from his own desiring-economy? Has he
> > > accepted that he must come to terms with himself and his past before
> > > he can encounter the Outside? Or is he falling, once again, into the
> > > terrible seduction of treating the Solaris simulations as if they
> > > were 'real'?
> >
> >
> > That is why I don't really think that Tarkovsky thinks the ending of
> > his Solaris is "uplifting" (nor "depressing" for that matter), it is a
> > little more complex, since it seems to suggest that both the quest
> > into the outside and the inside world(s) are like wishful thinking;
> > the result of our longing, our desire, our feelings of guilt, shame,
> > fantasy, hope, faith etc. However, both in Solaris and in Stalker,
> > these quests seem to end in "depression", but the deeper truth, I
> > think is that all the main characters do end up with something that is
> > essential for human beings; belief, and our conscience, the very
> > essence of what makes us human. The travelers in Stalker may not have
> > entered the room, but they have "entered" their inner worlds and this
> > quest certainly is honored and spiritually rewarded. This is the
> > "elixer" of the Searchers in both Solaris and Stalker. (Personally, I
> > think the ending of Stalker is more succesful and less a "twist" like
> > the ending of Solaris)
>
> Agreed, with the caveat about 'human' mentioned above.
For all that I mention in this post: with most of what you say I can
agree. It is just that I want to take a look at some nuances, but my
English isn't good enough, I'm afraid...
>
> > Soderbergh can never scratch these kind of layers.
>
> I haven't seen the Soderbergh film, but I'm fairly confident - given
> his track record -that you are right.
I find it really alarming to see what is becoming of American cinema.
There are enough "smart" filmmakers in the US, enough of them
understand the mere craftmanship of making films. But a real deep
personal devotion, someone who really goes for expressing one's own
original cinematic quest; no.
The best recent attempt was Malick's Thin Red Line, but even that film
was too slick, a bit too self-indulgent, but at least it really
posessed some integrity.
Nowadays, we should be "happy" that a studio releases a remake like
SS's Solaris.
It really shows how much American cinema is becoming (a) Titanic.
d.a.
dutch_angle
> reflect emotional maturity, whereas I think it does. Indeed, you
> think that facing life's problems rather than using death as an escape
> is a "strange" approach to life, or at any rate that it is "strange"
> to think this is the case. To each his own. Those who read our words
> can judge for themselves whose view is more acceptable.
I think that the matter of "suicide" in Soderbergh's Solaris is a
matter of (the filmmaker's) integrity. I cannot find much integrity in
Soderbergh's film.
I was surprised by the way you firmly expressed the thought that
Soderbergh glorified suicide. I don't really know if I can fully agree
with that exact statement, but I certainly felt insulted in the way
Soderbergh developed his story; for example, both his use of
flashbacks and the ending that he chose were totally dissatisfying,
even laugable, to me. Despite the complex material, his film feels
like a "quicky", not a patiently developed personal
cinematic-philosophical quest.
The ending that Soderbergh came up with, the supposed "tragic" reunion
of Kelvin and Rheya really feels like a compromise; it just feels
false and wrong.
Still I wonder how rejection of suicide reflects emotional maturity,
and how you think the film should have ended.
Btw, Soderbergh should have casted Leslie Nielsen, in stead of
Clooney, at least then he was close to a great parody, who knows.
d.a.
David Kirkpatrick
First of all, no offense, only alliteration, was intended by the ducking
"Dutch guy". (At least, no offense to the Dutch.)
Thomas Kuhn wrote *The Structure of Scientific Revolutions* in which he
introduced the now familiar concept of "scientific paradigm" to describe
the way in which advances in the sciences are done either incrementally
within an established paradigm or in quantum leaps when a new paradigm
emerges by way of radical shifts in underlying models of reality,
reflected in qualitative differences between the types of questions that
are asked or the basic concepts that are employed. Incidentally, I
attended a talk that Kuhn gave in the 80's in which he emphasized the
role of metaphor in the guiding of scientific thought.
Within one paradigm there are agreed systems of measurement; different
paradigms are essentially incommeasurate. This makes it difficult to
argue in absolute terms that one paradigm is better than another, since
each paradigm puts forward its own evaluation criteria. Hence, the
concept of alternative "paradigms" is sometimes invoked in arguments for
cultural relativism.
By the "broader" usage of the concept I mean the way the idea is
sometimes generalized to include the history of ideas and even
lifestyles. For example, stylistic revolutions in the arts (e.g. cubism
and descendents in painting) or radical shifts or rifts in philosophy
(e.g. ordinary language philosophy versus existentialism) or pop
interpretations of modern history such as Toffler's Third Wave or
Reich's Consciousness III or McLuhan's take on literacy versus oracy.
Kuhn's metaphor (drawn from grammar) has been a powerful metaphor for
the power of metaphor, inspiring all sorts of abductions that he didn't
necessarily encourage. Perhaps because his theory (arguably) portrays
science as a realm within the humanities rather than alien realm
answerable only to the rigors of mathematics and logic.
Like any powerful concept, it can be overused or abused to the point
that it loses much of its power. As with any metaphor, some
applications of the term paradigm make a lot of sense, others almost no
sense and others somewhere in-between.
Dogme 95 might be thought of as a kind of filmmaker's paradigm made
explicit; CGE might be a kind of paradigm. The currency of the former
is absence of illusion, in the latter it is the perfectibility of
illusion. Art film versus Hollywood formula film seem to constitute
alternative paradigms. Note how reviews have a greater currency for the
one and box office for the other. Excellence and mediocrity are
definitely not paradigms. Although "high-brow" versus "low-brow" might
be. Tragedy versus comedy might be regarded as alternative paradigms,
but one might equally think of an esthetic which recognizes both tragedy
and comedy as one paradigm whereas an esthetic which is more interested
in the distinction between seriousness and "camp" as a different paradigm.
This is all skimming the surface, but it gives you an idea of the
vastness of the surface.
Cultural and epistemic relativism are basic concerns in science fiction;
on the personal level this borders on the issues of faith and
skepticism, solopsism and shared humanity. E.g. communication with
extra-terrestrials is partly an SF metaphor for reconciling East with
West and the male mind with the female.
Note: in case there's someone out there who thinks a reference to Kuhn
is needlessly obscure, his book does appear chronologically as #97 in
"The 100 Most Influential Books Ever Written" by Martin Seymour-Smith,
between Chomsky's Syntactical Structures and Friedan's The Feminine
Mystique. A good read, though it includes a viciously unfair attack on
Hegel.
David
mark de rozario
> ma...@diskontent.net (mark de rozario) wrote in message news:<ca59a535.02120...@posting.google.com>...
> > lenw...@earthlink.net (Leonard F. Wheat) wrote in message news:<b5f71a25.02120...@posting.google.com>...
> > > ma...@diskontent.net (mark de rozario) wrote in message news:<ca59a535.02120...@posting.google.com>...
> > > > lenw...@earthlink.net (Leonard F. Wheat) wrote in message news:<b5f71a25.02120...@posting.google.com>...
>
> > > You and I can see some problems with this ending, but what we see and
> > > what Tarkovsky wanted us to see are two different things. A review by
> > > Doug Cummings makes some useful points in this regard:
>
> > I agree Cummings makes some useful points, but on what grounds can he
> > be allowed to speak for Tarkovsky's intentions?
>
> Although some films (most notably Kubrick's)are indeed hard to
> interpret,
err, yep....
>intelligent reviewers like Cummings--and many intelligent
> viewers, for that matter--can certainly recognize the filmmaker's
> intentions.
How? It's not clear that anyone, no matter how scholarly, can
determine a filmmaker's interests, except by means of spurious
circular argument.
>Cummings is particularly well qualified in this respect,
> because he is familiar with Tarkovsky's other work and with
> Tarkovsky's repetitive themes.
That would qualify him to be familiar with Tarkovsky' s other work and
to identify his repeated themes. Not to identify Tarkovsky's
intentions.
>
> Once you've reflected carefully on Tarkovsky's Solaris,
I have carefully reflected on Tarkovsky's Solaris, I can assure you.
>it isn't hard
> to see that the film shoves Lem's science fiction aside and develops
> Tarkovsky's theme of the healing power of love.
It downplays certain of Lem's themes, but whether this is the same as
'shoving science fiction' aside depends on how restricted your
definition of science fiction is.
> Kelvin's gradual
> recognition of the depth of his love for Hari cleanses his soul and
> gives him concomitant recognition of the depth of his love for his
> father and for existence (represented by natural beauty--the water,
> the horses, the trees, the rural tranquility, etc.).
This only works if we accept that water, horses, trees etc are lame
'symbols' of interior states, with one assignable meaning. As dutch
has pointed out, Tarkovsky despaired at the 'symbolic' interpretations
of his work. Why do animals and landscapes have to 'represent'
something beyond themselves?
> Tarkovsky
> clearly intended to show that Kelvin was healed, that his soul was
> cleansed. And that implies that Tarkovsky wanted to show Kelvin
> achieving reconciliation with his father. Imperfections in
> Tarkovsky's ending certainly diluted the message, but Tarkovsky's
> intent is plain enough.
It's still not clear to me how you are determining this alleged
intention. Apparently, your account of his intention is gleaned solely
from what is on the screen. Yet the ending is also onscreen. So your
version of what his intentions are has to arbitrarily subtract one of
the most important elements of the film. On what grounds is this
subtraction made?
>
<snip>
>
> How can you deny or even question the idea that natural beauty is a
> human value?
Quite easily. I agree that the appreciation of natural beauty might be
a human value. But this is not the role 'natural beauty' plays in
Tarkovsky's films. It is even questionable whether 'beauty' is what
Tarkovsky shows. Quite often in Tarkovsky - and in Solaris - Nature
appears drab and bleak. Nature is associated in Tarkovsky with
entering into composition with nonhuman forces - becoming-animal,
becoming-rain, becoming-water. Nature is in this sense _opposed_ to
the idea of the self-sufficient human. If anything, it is a nonhuman
value.
>Besides, Lem's unhappiness with Tarkovsky's film did not
> rest on the idea that Tarkovsky championed the particular human value
> of natural beauty. Lem was concerned with, and was objecting to, a
> different human value--anthropocentric thinking.
Yes, and I think Tarkovsky was also opposed to anthropocentrism, but
in a different way.
>Only at the level of
> abstraction, which subsumes both natural beauty and anthropocentrism
> under the general heading "human values," was Lem opposed to the
> championing of human values. I can't believe (can you?) that Lem has
> any problem with natural beauty; he just didn't want it to be a theme
> of a movie based on his book. He wanted his own theme advanced.
Yes. But, for the reasons explained above, I think this is a
misunderstanding of Tarkovsky's film.
>
> > Tarkovsky's whole career is a critique of
> > anthropocentrism. As Cummings points out, Tarkovsky's 'trademark
> > images' are 'water, trees, horses, dogs, rural settings', in other
> > words, matter, animals and landscapes: the cosmos. Tarkovsky's
> > critique of science fiction is that it, too, rests on anthropocentric
> > premises. It overlooks the alien wonder of the cosmos all around us
> > in favour of a quasi-imperialistic quest to conquer more space.
>
> If I read you correctly, you are saying that appreciation of natural
> beauty comes under Lem's heading of anthropocentrism.
No, not at all. I am saying that an entering into composition with
Nature dissolves human-centredness.
> I certainly
> don't claim to know much about Lem's writing--Solaris is the only book
> of his I've read--but I have read a little bit about Lem. Both what
> I've read and the implausibility of what you've written lead me to
> doubt that Lem underappreciates natural beauty.
I'm lost. Who was saying that?
> Lem's Solaris is
> about anthropocentric conceptions OF ALIEN LIFE existing elsewhere in
> the cosmos. He's saying that our inability to analyze alien life in
> nonanthropocentric terms dooms to failure our attempts to comprehend
> it.
Yes, that's a given. No-one is contesting that.
>
> > > Cummings is pointing out that Tarkovsky's movie is about Kris Kelvin's
> > > spiritual generation. He begins estranged not only from his father
> > > but from the beauty of the earth. Rain falling on Kris symbolizes the
> > > gloom and isolation that pervade Kris's psyche as he prepares to leave
> > > earth. The end begins with rain--more gloom--dripping on his father.
> >
> > Rain correlates with many things in Tarkovsky; I think it is reductive
> > to equate it with gloom alone.
>
> It may or may not be true that "rain correlates with many things in
> Tarkovsky" (i.e., in his entire body of work). If you say that it
> does, though, I'll take your word for it. But it doesn't matter what
> rain symbolizes in some other film.
Rain doesn't 'symbolize' anything in any of Tarkovsky's films, in my
view.
>We're talking about the prologue
> and the ending of Solaris. Solaris opens with a bucolic scene
> depicting natural beauty, but then suddenly it starts raining. The
> context--the circumstances and what follows--make it plain that gloom
> has arrived on the scene. I can see no point in Tarkovsky's having it
> rain other than the point that the rain represents gloom. The ending,
> which begins with the father soaked (literally) with gloom--rain
> dripping on him through leaks in the roof--reinforces this
> interpretation, as does the lifting of the rain when father and son
> embrace.
>
> > > Then the father comes out, father and son embrace, the sun comes out,
> > > and the natural beauty of the earth again comes into view. And the
> > > force that brings this all about is Kris's realization of the depth of
> > > his love for Hari. The movie is about the healing power of love; it
> > > is a love story, one that features a dark cloud with a silver lining.
> > > This is what Tarkovsky wanted us to see.
>
> > > We both saw subtle
the so-called problems BTW are not 'subtle'; they are absolutely clear
to 'anyone who reflects on Tarkovsky's Solaris' - which presumably
included Tarkovsky himself.
>>> problems that constituted blemishes in the artist's
> > > painting. But we weren't supposed to see those blemishes.
>
> > How do you know? If Tarkovsky had intended the film to end with
> > reconciliation, why did he not simply have Kelvin return to earth? I
> > don't believe an artist of Tarkovsky's intelligence would be unaware
> > of the ambivalences of this ending.
>
> How do I know Tarkovsky didn't want us to see the ending's blemishes,
> assuming that he himself was aware of them? Call it an elementary
> understanding of human nature. Why would an artist want you to see
> blemishes in his work?
I suppose I meant, how do you know that what you are calling
'blemishes' are in fact 'blemishes'? They are only blemishes if we
foist your simplistic model of Tarkovsky's intentions onto him -
attributing an infantile symbolic schema to the film ('rain'=gloom,
'sun'=happiness) -, and then claim that he has failed to live up to
those intentions. Otherwise, the ending is not a blemish, but a deeply
ambivalent, complex meditation on desire, love and loss.
>
> Why didn't Tarkovsky "simply have Kelvin return to earth?" I'd be
> willing to bet even money that Tarkovsky's whole concept for the film
> centered on the ending he had in mind.
So Tarkovsky's whole concept of the film centred on the ending, but
the ending was contrary to his intentions. Que?
> Tarkovsky was an artist, and a
> darned good one. He had an esthetically brilliant idea for an ending
> where the camera climbs slowly into the sky, gradually revealing that
> the farm is a reconstituted farm located not on earth but on Solaris.
> He obviously wouldn't abandon this concept for love or money.
>
> Unfortunately, this ending imprisons Kelvin on a tiny island on an
> alien planet for the rest of his life, and without any possibility of
> enjoying most of the things (music, books, human contact, etc.) that
> make life enjoyable. Also unfortunately, the ending fails to bring
> any satisfaction to Kelvin's father. The real father is back on earth
> and probably six feet under at this point. Even if the real father is
> still alive, he cannot experience the reconciliation that his double
> is experiencing on Solaris. Only the real Kris Kelvin knows the joy
> of reconciliation.
Exactly. And only an idiot could fail to recognise this. And Tarkovsky
was no idiot.
>
> Did Tarkovsky recognize these problems? Who knows? I'm inclined to
> think that he didn't.
But how could he not? Two second's thought would show that the ending
does not show a straightforward reconciliation.
>But whether he did or didn't doesn't matter.
> The point remains that Tarkovsky's ending is seriously flawed.
This is only the point if we accept your model of what the film is
about.
>The
> healing power of love hasn't gotten Kris very far, and it hasn't
> gotten his father on earth anywhere.
Maybe Tarkovsky is just a _little_ more subtle than you are allowing?
How _could_ love heal Hari, for instance? Doesn't Kelvin have to
learn that nothing could possibly heal her? Isn't the film about
accepting the limitations of the healing power of love?
>
> > > Also, as Cummings shows, the film is deeply in conflict with the
> > > science fiction theme that Lem was presenting.
>
> > It depends what you mean by science fiction. You could either see
> > Tarkovksy's film as anti-science fiction, or as a critique of sf which
> > could open up new possibilities for the genre.
>
> No, no, absolutely not. Tarkovsky isn't attacking science fiction.
> Neither is he attacking Lem's approach to science fiction of Lem's
> ideas. Tarkovsky just isn't interested in these things.
Implicitly, he is 'attacking' science fiction (or what science fiction
was taken to be); precisely by his displacement of its themes. And it
shouldn't need pointing out that Solaris did open up new possibilities
for the genre: it is a decisive influence on two of the greatest
science fiction films made since (perhaps the only great sf films made
since): Alien and Blade Runner.
> He has his
> own fish to fry--his own themes to develop. He wanted to make a movie
> about the healing power of love and about the overcoming of human
> estrangement. Lem's novel provided a good setting and a useful
> concept (the "visitors") for developing the idea.
Yes, but the idea that these themes are opposed to science fiction (sf
can't be about the healing power of love) suggests an alarmingly
limited conception of what sf can be.
>
> > > > Tarkovsky's Solaris has two important themes: can we make contact with
> > > > an inhuman cosmos? and, Can we face up to our desire (which is the
> > > > secret of what we are)?
>
> > > I can't agree that these are Tarkovsky's themes. See Cummings points
> > > above, with which I agree.
> >
> > Well, as I have tried to show, I think Cummings is mistaken in
> > thinking that 'natural beauty' - or even the power of love for that
> > matter - are 'human values.' For Tarkovsky, they are - for want of a
> > better term - 'religious' values.
>
> We've already covered this ground, or at least the "natural beauty"
> part of it, but it seems that my point needs to be repeated. It is
> obvious and undeniable by any reasonable person (that makes you
> unreasonable--sorry!) that natural beauty is a human value.
See my - presumably unreasonable - refutation of this above.
>Granted,
> there are lots of humans who show no appreciation of natural beauty,
> but most of us do appreciate it. Of course natural beauty is a human
> value.
>
> You are closer to the truth when you associate "the power of love"
> with religion, although the idea can also be found in many works of
> fiction and in nonreligious areas of society. Religion constantly
> exalts love and equates God with love ("God is love," whatever that is
> supposed to mean). So deeply engrained in religion is the word "love"
> that, back in 1963, an atheistic theologian, John A. T. Robinson wrote
> HONEST TO GOD, book in which he redefined God as love--and meant it
> literally, although many naive readers took him figuratively.
Yes, I think we can safely say that love and religion have been
associated in the past.
>But
> what difference does it make whether the healing power of love is a
> "human value" or a "religious value"? Either way, as Cummings points
> out, it is a value espoused by Tarkovsky.
Yes, but it seems to me very important whether we are dealing with a
value expressing human centrality in the cosmos or one which puts
human beings back into the cosmos. The first is an anthropocentric
perspective; the second is not.
>
> > > Tarkovsky has no interest in Lem's theme of contact with aliens that
> > > are not anthropomorphic beings, beings with traits we can relate to.
> > > Tarkovsky has replaced Lem's themes with his own.
> >
> > I don't think he has replaced, so much as displaced, Lem's themes.
> > Tarkovsky, it is true, has no interest in contact with alien beings.
>
> Do we really need to get bogged down in semantic issues such as
> whether "replaced" or "displaced" is the better word? (It seems to me
> that, in the present context, both words convey roughly the same
> meaning.)
Not really. Displaced means moved, altered, repositioned. Replaced
means gotten rid of. I don't think Tarkovsky got rid of Lem's themes.
Even the alien beings feature in the film, albeit not as its
philosophical focus. And, as I've tried to establish, I believe that
Tarkovsky offers his own rendition of a theme we agree was central to
Lem's novel: the limits of an anthropocentric worldview.
>What is essential is that, as you say, Tarkovsky has no
> interest in Lem's theme that concerns contact with alien beings.
Perhaps.
mark de rozario
> Yes, and James Stewart should have just calmed down a gosh darn
> minute, forgotten all about Madeleine, and considered his professional
> obligations to his employer--the gold standard by which all imaginary
> people are measured.
LOL!
On a serious note, it is very interesting to compare Vertigo with
Solaris: the same, inevitably failed, quest for a lost (never
present?) object of love, the same torment of encountering someone/
something that is not-not your loved one; but I suppose this all so
much 'emotional goo.'
:-)
dutch_angle
How would you relate this (more specifically) to Solaris?
d.a.
mark de rozario
> > > > an inhuman cosmos?
> > >
> > > I wouldn't put it this way, because this implies a (too) strict
> > > scientific quest that would be answered with either a yes or a no,
> > > whereas I think Tarkovsky aims at a far deeper level;
> >
> > No, not at all. It is the idea that making contact with the cosmos is
> > a 'scientific' - rather than a 'spiritual' - quest that Tarkovsky
> > rejects.
>
> I don't think he rejects a 'scientific' quest; the 'scientific' quest
> merely serves the 'spiritual' quest, it goes right along with it.
> To 'reject', I think, is, again, too strict.
OK. What I meant was that Tarkovsky 'rejects' the opposition between
science/knowledge and affect/desire. It is probably more accurate to
say that _positivistic science_ rejects affect and desire.
>
>
> > Kelvin's mistake, at least in the early part of the film, is
> > his positivistic assumption that you can learn about the cosmos in
> > some disinterested way.
>
> I wouldn't call that a mistake though.
> That is too much a judgement.
Why not a mistake? The film shows this assumption to be unfounded.
This is why Gibarian and Snow indulgently smile when Kelvin arrives on
Solaris; they know he is about to be disabused of his expectations
about scientific enquiry.
> Why is Kelvin's assumption that you can learn about the cosmos
> positivistic?
Positivistic = the trad scientific worldview that only what can be
measured and observed is worthy of study. Affects and desires cannot,
of course, be measured and observed; at least not in the required way.
> And why do you say he does so in a disinterested way?
I didn't. I said he assumed he could learn about the cosmos in a
disinterested way; that he could consider it as an object of study
from which he was detached. Solaris - the planet and Tarkovsky's film
- shows that this is not possible.
> Doesn't it kind of foreshadow his denial of his own cosmos, his mental
> state?
It doesn't foreshadow it so much as complement it, in my view. This is
Kelvin's condition - the idea that his psyche is 'inside', private,
goes alongside his belief that the universe is 'outside.'
> >
> > >the "cosmos" as
> > > the "outside world" obviously mirrors the "inside world", our own
> > > individual world, our conscience, our mental crisis, our own "cosmos".
> >
> > O dear, I think we are going to have our interiority/ exteriority
> > 'discussion' yet again. To say that the cosmos 'mirrors' our internal
> > world would be to buy into the anthropocentric worldview that I
> > believe Tarkovsky is questioning. Landscape, the elements, animals:
> > they are not symbols of internal psychological states. They are
> > genuinely exterior and to make contact is to open ourselves to this
> > Outside.
>
> And how do we open ourselves to this Outside and how would one
> visualize this?
How would one visualize this? Tarkovsky visualises it perfectly. How
can we open ourselves to the Outside? Much harder, but Tarkovsky gives
us a few hints...
>
> I don't see the inside and outside world as seperate. The landscape,
> the elements, animals, they all represent an environment that serves
> Kelvin's quest, which first appears to be 'scientific', but becomes
> more and more 'spiritual'; the ocean and Solaris mirror interiority
> into exteriority. To analyse this process perhaps suggests these
> seperate worlds, but they remain firmly connected. Kelvin, because of
> the specifics of this environment, is forced to acknowledge the
> 'inner' cosmos, his own past, his own memories, for instance. Khari,
> in Tarkovsky's Solaris, is genuinely exterior and genuinely interior,
> because that is how Kelvin's environment, the outside, makes him 'open
> up himself'; what is reveals and expresses is really his mental
> crisis.
>
> Whether Tarkovsky is questioning the anthropocentric worldview, I
> don't know. I don't think that he wants to question 'a worldview', but
> rather expresses his own view.
I don't necessarily see an opposition; Tarkovsky articulates his own
worldview by dialogue with worldviews he does not share. And it is
pretty clear - in Solaris and in Stalker - that Tarkovsky is
interrogating worldviews to which he is unsympathetic. In Solaris, it
is positivistic science; in Stalker, positivistic science again
(Scientist with his measuring instruments), but also aesthetic
nihilism (Writer's denunciation of positivism - 'triangle A,B,C is
triangle A,B,C' - devolves into a kind of generalized despair);
neither attain the Holy Foolishness of the Stalker, the sorcerer's
wisdom, the innocence of becoming, the affect-knowledge of the
intensive cartographer ....
>
<snip points of agreement>
> >
> > > Therefore, I don't think that Tarkovsky really is interested in
> > > whether we can make contact with an inhuman cosmos or not; the way he
> > > establishes the cosmos serves the purpose of further developing the
> > > inner quest, a spiritual search for the human spirit; what makes us
> > > human?
> >
> > But aren't his films critical of humanism? His films are all about
> > entering into composition with the nonhuman, becoming-animal,
> > becoming-landscape, becoming-water. This is what, for instance, the
> > Stalker can do, but the humanists (the writer, the scientist) cannot.
>
> But how does this make Stalker critical of humanism?
Clearly it depends on how we define 'humanism.' One sense of humanism
is opposed to religion; I believe Tarkovsky has a religious
sensibility. Another sense of humanism is a worldview that puts human
beings at the centre of the universe; I believe Tarkovsky does not
share this conception.
>
> I don't think that much about films being "a critique" of something.
> I wonder whether that is what filmmakers as Tarkovsky care about.
> I think he cares more about expressing his own world-view.
> Of course, we are all free to see films as "critiques".
>
> I think Tarkovsky is more making an intense plea for our spiritual
> needs, than he is making a "critique"; a "critique" is like a dead-end
> street.
So it would be if Tarkovsky's films were merely critiques, merely
negative. Then they would be like Writer. But Tarkovsky also advances
his positive account; which is nowhere better embodied than in the
person of the Stalker.
>
<snip>
> >
> > Ironically, given your loathing of 'symbols', I think you are in
> > danger of treating much in Tarkovsky as 'symbolic' of internal
> > psychological states.
>
> No, it depends on how you analyse my analysis.
> And my analysis can never be 'right'.
> I don't use words like 'symbol', because it is of no use at all.
>
>
> > Tarkovsky's preoccupation with landscape should
> > be taken at face value. The assumption of an interior subjective space
> > _separate_ from an 'external' world of quantifiable extended space is
> > just as much a part of Kelvin's worldview as is his blithe confidence
> > that 'knowledge' of the cosmos is simply a question of applying
> > scientific logic.
>
> How do you define "face value" here?
Well, non-symbolic, I suppose!
>
> As I mentioned above, it isn't my intention to seperate the interior
> subjective space from the external world of quantifiable extended
> space, to follow your words.
>
> Despite all technology and knowledge of the cosmos, despite applying
> scientific logic, all characters in Solaris appear to be disappointed
> and depressed, as if they are "killing" the "life" within themselves.
> Yet I don't think Tarkovsky is criticizing "technology" or
> "knowledge", he merely seems to have found his way of expressing our
> need for some spiritual 'goal'. Without this, technology and
> scientific quest for knowlegde rather comes across as 'tragic', I
> think.
>
Yes. Absolutely. Tarkovsky is not attacking knowledge, or even
technology; he is instead advancing a different model of knowledge,
one in which desire and affect are integral elements.
>
> > Kelvin's _affective _ indifference to the external
> > world is part of the same condition which numbs him to his supposedly
> > 'inner' psychological past. The idea that the cosmos is an inert
> > 'object' of knowledge is clearly under attack in both Solaris and
> > Stalker: what the ocean and the Zone's investigators cannot deal with
> > is the fact that their putative objects of study are intensive, rather
> > than extensive spaces, mutantly in becoming, super-sensitive to the
> > very presence and affective state of their human explorers. Yet just
> > as there is no ontologically independent object of knowledge, there is
> > no subject of knowledge either. The one dissolves with the other. What
> > replaces them are subtle fields of engagement, landscapes,
> > singularities, in which the human is always becoming-something else.
>
> Yes.
> And what do you think the travelers in both Solaris and Stalker "can"
> deal with, and what do they gain from their quest?
>
Difficult. Kelvin seems to have come to terms with his ghosts more
successfully than Writer or Scientist do in Stalker. That's why the
Stalker is so wretched at the end of the film. Yet --- he is not in
despair. Perhaps the travelers in the Zone have learned something? If
only about how much they fear themselves?
<snip>
>
> For all that I mention in this post: with most of what you say I can
> agree. It is just that I want to take a look at some nuances, but my
> English isn't good enough, I'm afraid...
It's better than my dutch, I can assure you.... :-)
>
>
> >
> > > Soderbergh can never scratch these kind of layers.
> >
> > I haven't seen the Soderbergh film, but I'm fairly confident - given
> > his track record -that you are right.
Your description of Soderbergh as a 'copy-paste chameleon' neatly
captures my own view of him: the anti-auteuer, no two films having a
thing in common, no vision or sensibility....
>
> I find it really alarming to see what is becoming of American cinema.
>
> There are enough "smart" filmmakers in the US, enough of them
> understand the mere craftmanship of making films. But a real deep
> personal devotion, someone who really goes for expressing one's own
> original cinematic quest; no.
Sadly, that appears to be right. Compare US cinema with what it was
like in the 70s; what an unbelievable, catastrophic decline.
> The best recent attempt was Malick's Thin Red Line, but even that film
> was too slick, a bit too self-indulgent,
Yeh, I agree, I didn't really connect with it. But I may have to see
it again.
>but at least it really
> posessed some integrity.
>
> Nowadays, we should be "happy" that a studio releases a remake like
> SS's Solaris.
Yes, systematically lowering expectations seems to be part of the way
Hollywood is operating.
Leonard F. Wheat
Suicide is generally an emotional act, a reaction to disappointment,
depression, or despair. In these emotional situations, emotional
maturity reveals itself in the ability to control one's emotions, just
as one would control one's temper when anger generates the impulse to
lash out physically or verbally. Emotional maturity enables one to
behave rationally and to keep one's overt acts (but not necessarily
one's feelings) under control. Acting rationally means rejecting
suicide in situations where it would accomplish nothing and where a
person with foresight can see that rejection will be a source of
thankfulness in the future. From another standpoint, emotional
maturity is the ability to control impulsive behavior. (If I were
writing a textbook on psychology, I'd put a lot more thought and care
into expressing my ideas here, but this is the best I can do offhand.)
Note that I don't say all suicide reflects emotional immaturity. In
situations where one form of death, suicide, is the only alternative
to a more disagreeable form of death, suicide can be a mature,
rational act. I support those who, faced with slow, painful deaths
from cancer or other ailments, take their lives under Oregon's
assisted suicide law. A man who has just killed his wife and children
in a fit of rage and knows he cannot escape capture and eventual
execution is certainly behaving rationally when he commits suicide.
Hitler, faced with a choice between death at the hands of the Russians
or death by his own hand, was not emotionally immature in his decision
to commit suicide.
> and how you think the film should have ended.
How the film should end depends on the course it takes in reaching the
end. Unlike Tarkovsky, Soderbergh had nothing to say, so I'm not sure
that a satisfactory ending--an ending that said something--could be
developed from the Soderbergh course of events. In the abstract, I
would have liked to have seen the film follow more of a science
fiction course, somewhat along Lem's line of solving a scientific
mystery but without Lem's idea that the mystery is unsolvable. Some
ultimate finding, insight, accident, or event would then lead to
resolution of the central problem.
But if Soderbergh felt compelled to treat Solaris as a love story in a
science fiction setting, the best ending would be one that lets
insights gained by Kelvin through his encounter with Rheya help him
overcome problems back on earth. For example--this is just an
example--he might have remarried and found himself with similar
problems with the wife back on earth. Rheya's "ghost" could help him
see how to treat his new wife. In any case--whatever the plot
line--Kelvin's return to earth should be explicit or implicit. No
suicide, no ghosts, no metaphorical heaven.
> Btw, Soderbergh should have casted Leslie Nielsen, instead of
> Clooney; at least then he was close to a great parody, who knows.
Not a bad idea, in case you're talking about the young Leslie Nielson
who starred in Forbidden Planet. After all, the "monster from the id"
that he originally defeated on an alien planet wasn't a whole lot
different from (except in personality) the one Kelvin encounters on an
alien planet.
But maybe you had in mind the older Leslie Nielson of slapstick
satire. I think today's Nielson would be ideal for the closing
scenes, but you'd have to find some way to rationalize the change of
appearance. Perhaps, deep in Kelvin's id, there is a desire to look
like Nielson. Solaris grasps this desire and puts a new face on the
new Kelvin.
Leonard F. Wheat
> I was never a big fan of High Noon.
Would it have helped if they (the good guys)had substituted Gene Autry
for Tex Ritter and had him sing "The Call of the Faraway Hills" (from
Shane) instead of "Do Not Forsake Me, Oh, My darlin'"?
> 4)As for the apple-wielding villian in Snow White, I believe she was
> more evil crone than "wicked witch," but, in any case, of course I was
> rooting for her!
I knew it! I knew it! I've had you pegged right from the start!
Leonard F. Wheat
> dutch_angle wrote:
> Note: in case there's someone out there who thinks a reference to Kuhn
> is needlessly obscure, his book does appear chronologically as #97 in
> "The 100 Most Influential Books Ever Written" by Martin Seymour-Smith,
> between Chomsky's Syntactical Structures and Friedan's The Feminine
> Mystique. A good read, though it includes a viciously unfair attack on
> Hegel.
No attack on Hegel could be viciously unfair. The man was either a
charlatan or an idiot, probably the former.
I'm curious, does the list of 100 books include Machiavelli's THE
PRINCE, Darwin's THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES, Frazer's THE GOLDEN BOUGH, and
Fowler's MODERN ENGLISH USAGE?
Leonard F. Wheat
> lenw...@earthlink.net (Leonard F. Wheat) wrote in message news:<b5f71a25.02120...@posting.google.com>...
> > ma...@diskontent.net (mark de rozario) wrote in message news:<ca59a535.02120...@posting.google.com>...
> > > lenw...@earthlink.net (Leonard F. Wheat) wrote in message news:<b5f71a25.02120...@posting.google.com>...
> > > > ma...@diskontent.net (mark de rozario) wrote in message news:<ca59a535.02120...@posting.google.com>...
> > > > > lenw...@earthlink.net (Leonard F. Wheat) wrote in message news:<b5f71a25.02120...@posting.google.com>...
> > Kelvin's gradual
> > recognition of the depth of his love for Hari cleanses his soul and
> > gives him concomitant recognition of the depth of his love for his
> > father and for existence (represented by natural beauty--the water,
> > the horses, the trees, the rural tranquility, etc.).
> This only works if we accept that water, horses, trees etc are lame
> 'symbols' of interior states, with one assignable meaning. As dutch
> has pointed out, Tarkovsky despaired at the 'symbolic' interpretations
> of his work. Why do animals and landscapes have to 'represent'
> something beyond themselves?
You are much too quick to dismiss the possibility of recognizing
symbols. Surely you realize that some filmmakers do use symbols. One
of the more obvious examples is Kubrick's use in 2001 of the name
Bowman for the character who symbolizes Odysseus in Kubrick's Odysseus
allegory. Odysseus was a bowman, an archer, who used his Great Bow to
slay his wife's suitors. Again in 2001, Hal's red eye is the eye of
the cyclops; Hal is the cyclops. And so on.
A filmmaker who uses symbols isn't doing it for the exercise. He
hopes that some of the more perceptive viewers will pick them up and
get the point. The symbols are designed to be recognized, not by
everyone (that would require that they be to blatant) but at least by
a few who succeed in getting the message. My point: symbols CAN be
recognized--even in some cases where the person recognizing the symbol
can't interpret it.
In the prologue to Tarkovsky's Solaris, I saw two widely separated
shots of a horse, fairly close up. The horse had nothing to do with
the story. I knew it had to be symbolic. But I didn't have the
faintest idea what it symbolized. Much later, after writing my own
review of Solaris, I read Cummings' review. There I learned about
Tarkovsky's penchant for depicting the beauty of nature. Cummings
specifically mentioned water, horses, trees, and some other things. I
accept Cummings' interpretation because the horse plainly is symbolic.
I had thought it was a specific symbol, but Cummings points out that
it is part of a SET of symbols that collectively depict something. My
point, again, is that some symbols can be recognized as such even when
they can't be interpreted.
Later in Tarkovsky's prologue, Berton returns from Kelvin senior's
cottage to Moscow. This is a long, drawn out trip in an automobile.
The trip first takes us through tunnels and then over elevated
freeways. That trip is just as obviously symbolic as Bowman's trip
through the tunnel of lights is in 2000. But whereas I know what
Bowman's trip symbolizes (several things), I have no idea what
Berton's trip symbolizes. Still, there is absolutely no doubt that it
is symbolic. Otherwise it wouldn't be there. From the story
standpoint, Berton's trip to Moscow need not be shown. Much less does
it have to be dragged out for so long. Berton is a minor character,
and all he has to do is say he is leaving and then leave. His journey
is shown, in detail, because Tarkovsky wanted to symbolize something?
My point: you can recognize some symbols as symbols without being able
to interpret them. They ARE there, and they DO have meaning. (If
anyone can interpret this symbolism, I'd like to hear the
interpretation.)
Earlier in the prologue, Berton arrives at the farm with a boy in tow.
The boy seems to be his grandson. Berton asks Kelvin senior (Kris'
father) if Berton can leave the boy on the farm for a few days.
What's this all about? From a story standpoint, both the boy and the
request are gratuitous. They have nothing to do with the plot. Some
sort of symbolism is at work here. You can recognize the symbolism
without being able to interpret it.
On to the planet Solaris. Kris has a dream in which the mother of his
youth (the young mother we saw earlier in a home movie make when Kris
was a boy of about 7) comes to him. She asks, "How did you get like
this?" Then she pulls up his sleeve. His arm is covered with soot.
Mama washes away the soot, and then Kris wakes up. The soot and the
cleansing are still more symbolism, and this time the meaning is
clear. Kris has been cleansed, at least partially, of some of the
figurative demons (the soot) that are tormenting him and affecting his
behavior.
I'll give just one more example. In the ending, Kris approaches his
father's cottage and peers in the window. It is raining. It also
rained in the prologue, but in the prologue the rain did not leak
through the cottage roof. Now, however, Kris sees rainwater coming
down through a leak in the roof onto his father. Then the father sees
Kris and comes out. Kris drops to his knees and grasps his father.
The sun comes out. Can't you see that the rain and the sun are
symbolic? Tarkovsky is no longer being subtle: this is blatant
symbolism. And this time it is easy to interpret. The rain
symbolizes the father's gloomy state of mind; the gloom results from
his estrangement from Kris. We needn't quibble about whether "gloom"
is precisely the right word; you certainly get the general picture.
Tarkovsky DOES use symbols, and many of them CAN be recognized. If
Tarkovsky "despaired" at some symbolic interpretations of his work, I
suspect it was because (a) his symbols were being misinterpreted by
many viewers and (b) nonsymbolic elements in his films were being
misread as symbolic. Any such mistakes of interpretation do not,
however, belie the presence of symbols.
> > Tarkovsky
> > clearly intended to show that Kelvin was healed, that his soul was
> > cleansed. And that implies that Tarkovsky wanted to show Kelvin
> > achieving reconciliation with his father. Imperfections in
> > Tarkovsky's ending certainly diluted the message, but Tarkovsky's
> > intent is plain enough.
>
> It's still not clear to me how you are determining this alleged
> intention. Apparently, your account of his intention is gleaned solely
> from what is on the screen. Yet the ending is also onscreen. So your
> version of what his intentions are has to arbitrarily subtract one of
> the most important elements [the ending] of the film. On what grounds is this
> subtraction made?
My interpretation of the cleansing does not ignore ("subtract") the
film's ending. On the contrary, it depends on the ending. Kris's act
of embracing his father is the proof that he has been cleansed of his
sense of, or desire for, alienation from his father. But you are
right about one thing: my account "IS gleaned solely from what is on
the screen." What's wrong with that?
> > How can you deny or even question the idea that natural beauty is a
> > human value?
> Quite easily. I agree that the appreciation of natural beauty might be
> a human value.
Well, then, you don't deny that natural beauty is a human value.
> But this is not the role 'natural beauty' plays in
> Tarkovsky's films. It is even questionable whether 'beauty' is what
> Tarkovsky shows.
There is an element of truth in what you say, but you are basically
wrong. I can't comment on Tarkovsky films other than Solaris, but in
Solaris beauty IS being shown. Beauty per se, however, is probably
not what Tarkovsky wants to symbolize. My impression is that beauty
itself is a symbol. We have two-stage symbolism here. The water, the
trees, the horses, dogs, the bucolic atmosphere in general--these
things symbolize beauty. Beauty, in turn, symbolizes a state of
happiness or contentment, the absence of alienation. That happiness
is about to turn to gloom. It starts to rain.
> > Besides, Lem's unhappiness with Tarkovsky's film did not
> > rest on the idea that Tarkovsky championed the particular human value
> > of natural beauty. Lem was concerned with, and was objecting to, a
> > different human value--anthropocentric thinking.
>
> Yes, and I think Tarkovsky was also opposed to anthropocentrism, but
> in a different way.
I don't think Tarkovsky gave a damn about anthropocentrism one way or
the other. His interests were in other areas.
> > > Tarkovsky's whole career is a critique of
> > > anthropocentrism. As Cummings points out, Tarkovsky's 'trademark
> > > images' are 'water, trees, horses, dogs, rural settings', in other
> > > words, matter, animals and landscapes: the cosmos.
You're not making any sense. The "natural beauty" examples you cite
have nothing to do with anthropocentrism. Neither are they the
"cosmos" that Lem was dealing with in Solaris. And even if natural
beauty did represent either anthropocentrism or the cosmos, Tarkovsky
is not objecting to natural beauty. He seems to love it. In other
words, he is a normal human being.
Jan
I posted my comment last week but it somehow never made it. I'm
reposting below (FWIW):
> Any sentimental satisfaction or esthetic appreciation evoked by this
> final scene disappears when you reflect on it. The father is no more
> real than Kris's reconstituted wife was. If the simulated wife was
> inadequate for genuine amends, why should the simulated father somehow
> be adequate? Even worse, Kris is a prisoner, incarcerated on an
> island. He will be devoid of human contact, apart from contact with
> his artificial father, for the rest of his life. He can't visit old
> friends, make new ones, or even enjoy stimulating conversations with
> colleagues or strangers. No travel, no trips to town, no music or
> radio, no other entertainment, no books, no scientific work. He can't
> even go for a decent walk, because the island is at most a city block
> in diameter. To repeat, Kris is a prisoner, confined in a tiny
> compound. Tarkovsky may think this ending is uplifting, but I found
> it depressing.
I never saw it this way. I simply assumed that Kris went down to the
Solaris surface for a few hours to check out one of the "islands"
Snaut mentions to Kris in the preceding scene.
Jan Bielawski
David Kirkpatrick
Leonard F. Wheat wrote:
> David Kirkpatrick <dak...@rogers.com> wrote in message news:<3DF4F0E7...@rogers.com>...
>
>>dutch_angle wrote:
>>
>
>>Note: in case there's someone out there who thinks a reference to Kuhn
>>is needlessly obscure, his book does appear chronologically as #97 in
>>"The 100 Most Influential Books Ever Written" by Martin Seymour-Smith,
>>between Chomsky's Syntactical Structures and Friedan's The Feminine
>>Mystique. A good read, though it includes a viciously unfair attack on
>>Hegel.
>>
>
> No attack on Hegel could be viciously unfair. The man was either a
> charlatan or an idiot, probably the former.
I'd say he was sincere genius. Perhaps he's somewhere in-between.
>
> I'm curious, does the list of 100 books include Machiavelli's THE
> PRINCE, Darwin's THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES, Frazer's THE GOLDEN BOUGH, and
> Fowler's MODERN ENGLISH USAGE?
>
Yes, yes, no and no. Would these be your favorites?
But, in lieu of Fowler, it does include Samuel Johnson's Dictionary.
Mostly it is a history of ideas, leaning towards the philosophical, the
religious and more occasionally, the scientific, political, economic and
artistic. Few works of fiction are included: Don Quixote, Shakespeare's
Complete Works, War and Peace, Kafka's The Trial (I'll resist the
temptation to label certain works of nonfiction as "fiction".)
David
Leonard F. Wheat
Although I'm sure Kris stays on the island, I can see where you're
coming from. I had a similar problem with the ending in the book.
There Kris is scheduled to return to earth but decides to take a
farewell flight in a "flitter" to see Solaris close up. He lands on
an island, has a small encounter with the ocean (it seems
disinterested in him), and then philosophizes: "Leaving would mean
giving up a chance, perhaps an infinitesimal one, perhaps only
imaginary . . . Must I go on living here then, among the objects we
both had touched, in the air she had breathed? In the name of what? .
. . And yet I lived in expectation. Since she had gone, that
[expectation] was all that remained."
Here Kris seems undecided ("Must I go on living here then?"). He
can't stay on the island, because the air has no oxygen and his
flitter carries only a short supply of oxygen in "the oxygen tanks."
(He has promised to be back at the space station "in half an hour.")
And he has no clear motive, just some impulses, for staying on the
station. It was not until I read the Lem interview that I was sure
Kris stayed. Lem said, "My Kelvin decides to stay on the planet
without any hope whatsoever, while Tarkovsky created an image where
some kind of an island appears, and on that island a hut."
The ending of Tarkovsky's film has less ambiguity (and more oxygen in
the atmosphere!), because the hints that Kris may return to earth are
weaker. I perceived that Tarkovsky wanted to show Kris remaining with
his father, alienation conquered. He can't do that on earth, because
his father was going to be dead before Kris could return. A further
consideration is that Tarkovsky, in his own way, was trying to keep as
much of the novel as he could while radically changing its theme.
Tarkovsky said, "In order to remain faithful [sic] to the author, I
had to deviate from the novel now and then in search of visual
equivalents for certain themes." Here he expresses a desire to remain
faithful to the novel as much as possible, and staying on Solaris is
certainly possible.
But I can see where you would interpret things otherwise. The only
sure way to put your "I never saw it this way" to rest is to use the
approach I used to put my own uncertainty about the novel's ending to
rest. Let's see what the author, Tarkovsky in this case, says. He
says in an interview: "After all, Kelvin decides to stay on Solaris to
conduct experiments--he considers it his duty as a human being. Thus I
needed the Earth [prologue] in order for the viewer to realise even
more fully, sharply, the whole dramatic significance of his decision,
this surrender of returning to the planet which was and is our primal
home."
You can find the Lem and Tarkovsky interviews at
http://www.ucalgary.ca/~tstronds/nostalghia.com/TheTopics/On_Solaris.html
If you have trouble with that url, go to Google and search under the
following combination: "Tarkovsky, Lem, Solaris, Tolstoy Complex,
Warsaw."
Another Google combination: "Tarkovsky, Lem, Solaris, Crime and
Punishment."
And another: "Jan, Nostalghia, Tarkovsky, Lem, Solaris"
That Jan (from "English retranslation by Jan at Nostalghia.com")
couldn't be you, could it?
Padraig L Henry
Wheat) wrote:
>Suicide is generally an emotional act, a reaction to disappointment,
>depression, or despair. In these emotional situations, emotional
>maturity reveals itself in the ability to control one's emotions, just
>as one would control one's temper when anger generates the impulse to
>lash out physically or verbally. Emotional maturity enables one to
>behave rationally and to keep one's overt acts (but not necessarily
>one's feelings) under control. Acting rationally means rejecting
>suicide in situations where it would accomplish nothing and where a
>person with foresight can see that rejection will be a source of
>thankfulness in the future. From another standpoint, emotional
>maturity is the ability to control impulsive behavior.
Your contempt for, and ignorance of, the complexity of human emotions
is breathtaking, reductively defining emotional maturity in terms of
the reactionary exercise of discipline/control, as well as conflating
the emotional with the impulsive. Emotional intelligence is intrinsic
to human rationality. It seems that your - irrational - conception of
rationality is one that entails mistaking emotional self-denial for
enlightened self-control.
Your simplistic, ego-based, opportunistic "analysis" of suicide here
seems to be more informed by the atomistic presuppositions of
classical-imperialist economic dogma than by any real attempt to
properly engage with the underlying social, political and cultural
forces that impinge on such phenomena as suicide ...
>(If I were
>writing a textbook on psychology,
God forbid! You might take the opportunity to first study the subject
...
>Note that I don't say all suicide reflects emotional immaturity. In
>situations where one form of death, suicide, is the only alternative
>to a more disagreeable form of death, suicide can be a mature,
>rational act.
So, like, its a "mature, rational act" when the alternatives are
perceived to be worse, ie when there is no real choice, no real
decision to be made, no exercise of mature rationality, just yet
another of your emotionally infantile economic "consumer choice"
equations?
>I support those who, faced with slow, painful deaths
>from cancer or other ailments, take their lives under Oregon's
>assisted suicide law. A man who has just killed his wife and children
>in a fit of rage and knows he cannot escape capture and eventual
>execution is certainly behaving rationally when he commits suicide.
Huh? So, its just some irrational " fit of rage" (those horrid human
emotions again. Ugh!) that would lead a man to murder his wife and
children? And not some deeper social, psychological, or cultural
malaise? Profound. So those marines who returned home from the recent
slaughter in Afghanistan and promptly murdered their wives were just
seized by some mysterious "fit of rage", were they? And suicide is now
a "rational" solution to their unfortunate lifestyle choice?
>Hitler, faced with a choice between death at the hands of the Russians
>or death by his own hand, was not emotionally immature in his decision
>to commit suicide.
So, eh, you sympathise with Hitler committing "rational" suicide but
not with the average Joe "routine suicide" (to use your own term)?
Charming. Hitler, a well-documented manic sociopath, a shining example
of emotional maturity!
I think we know where your real empathies reside, Mr Wheat.
Padraig
Padraig L Henry
Wheat) wrote:
>phe...@iol.ie (Padraig L Henry) wrote in message news:<3df34549...@news.iol.ie>...
>> On 7 Dec 2002 19:22:41 -0800, lenw...@earthlink.net (Leonard F.
>> Wheat) wrote:
>
>> >Why do I prefer a return-to-earth ending to a suicide ending (without
>> >regard to what comes after the suicide)? Because I prefer behavior
>> >that exhibits emotional maturity, acceptance of life's disappoiintments
>> >and tragedies, and concern for the effects of one's actions on friends,
>> >colleagues,and the general public.
>
>> You sure have a strange notion of emotional maturity, repeatedly using
>> such derogatory, dismissive terms as " just so much emotional pap",
>> "happily-ever-after emotionalism", engaging in "self-centered
>> behavior", and "a pandering, Hollywood style ghost story." Oh, this is
>> emotional "maturity":
>
>If I read you correctly, you think rejection of suicide does not
>reflect emotional maturity, whereas I think it does.
No, I said that your idea of emotional maturity is one that revolves
around the condemnation and dismissal of any legimate emotional
displays. You prefer to condemn suicide rather than make any real
effort to try and understand it, as that might require of you to make
an emotional investment in such human suffering.
>Indeed, you
>think that facing life's problems
Facing them by rejecting them, denying them? Interesting - and
deluded. Reducing all live to a pathetic little child's puzzle (your
philosophy, endlessly paraded in your posts at AMK) is hardly facing
life's problems ... you suffer from Kris Kelvin's worldview; to
Solaris with you!
>> >acceptance of life's disappointments
>> >and tragedies, and concern for the effects of one's actions on
>> >friends, colleagues, and the general public. Regarding the last
>> >point--the effects of one's actions--Kelvin was sent to Solaris to
>> >learn what was going on there and to provide his superiors with vital
>> >information. Kelvin had a professional obligation to complete his
>> >mission and, in doing so, to contribute to the base of scientific
>> >knowledge about the planet. Am I to admire or feel empathy towards a
>> >person who turns his back on his responsibilities to engage in
>> >self-centered behavior?
>>
>> Emotional maturity entails rejecting all genuine human emotions and
>> meekly subscribing to the demands of an authoritarian technocracy, of
>> "getting with the program"???
>
>Like Peter Tonguette, you display the insecure debater's habit of
>placing words in other persons' mouths--words intended to make the
>other persons seem foolish.
I have no need to make you look foolish; you do such a good job
yourself.
>You are fully aware I neither said nor
>implied "emotional maturity entail rejecting all genuine human
>emotions" and that I never even commented on the subject of "the
>demands of an authoritarian technocracy." But you'd like for people
>to think otherwise, so you deliberately paraphrase me falsely.
Look, who are you trying to fool, other than yourself? Unless someone
actually spells something out for you in literal and monotonic-logic
terms (your modus operandi), that something therefore doesn't exist or
warrant any legitimate consideration? You said "Kelvin was sent to
Solaris to learn what was going on there and to provide his superiors
with vital information." Such a bland technocratic assertion is an
unflinching endorsement of hierarchical authoritarianism. (And Kelvin
unearthed "information" much more vital than anything his "superiors"
would comprehend). Then you say: "Kelvin had a professional obligation
to complete his mission and, in doing so, to contribute to the base of
scientific knowledge about the planet." Yet more pompous, mechanistic
technobabble (devoid of "emotional maturity"). "Professional
obligation", "mission", "base of scientific knowledge". You want all
art to be mere detached science PR, a bureaucracy-serving mechanical
exercise in puzzle-solving propaganda.
>
>Tell me, Padraig, since when did rejection of one particular human
>emotion, the impulse to commit suicide, amount to "rejecting ALL
>genuine human emotions"? And how did you acquire this silly habit of
>generalizing from one example.
All your posts at AMK provide ample confirmation.
>
>> >Conversely, I have a low regard for suicide and an even lower regard
>> >for fictional suicides that lack the contextual elements needed to
>> >turn routine suicide into a deeper sort of tragedy.
>
>> BTW, Numerous Hollywood films glorify and romanticise suicidal escape;
>> its a growing "theme" within contemporary American culture. From
>> Ridley Scott (the suicide ending of Thelma and Louise, with both
>> characters freeze-framed into a celluloid infinity of blissful
>> suicidal escape) to Terminator 2 and Alien 3 etc. You comparing
>> Solaris with these? Or with the very different treatment of "suicide"
>> in such films as The Thin Red Line and Full Metal Jacket?
>
>Why don't you stop hinting, Padraig, and learn to express yourself
>clearly. Is it your point that five solid black Newfoundland dogs
>prove that All Newfoundlands are solid black? That certainly seems to
>be your point, and if I'm misinterpreting you then you'd better learn
>to say what you mean.
Intentional misinterpretation is your vocation, along with inductive
fallacy and logical reductivism. I was making the point that suicide -
the incidence of, the portrayal of - in contemporary US society is an
important issue, not something to be summarily dismissed and condemned
(which only makes the problem worse). Anyway, why don't you go take a
trip to Newfoundland and test out your little black dog theory ...
>
>I haven't even seen most of the films that you say glorify suicide and
>that you apparently believe do so justifiably.
No need for you to repeat to us here your acknowledgement of your
scant film-viewing experience (what, 2 Kubrick films and another whose
title escapes your memory? One Tarkovsky film? Need I go on?). And
again, you totally misinterpret what I was saying. "Apparently believe
do so justifiably"? Sigh. Do you get out much? I stated that much of
American culture glorifies - in an unexamined, ignorant way - the
portrayal of suicide, giving some examples from Hollywood movies
(Ironic, really, given US attitudes to suicidal Islamic terrorism
..).
> But for purposes of
>argument, I'm willing to assume that the Thelma and Louise context
>justifies suicide. Does that prove that ALL film suicides deserve to
>be glorified and romantisized? Would ten justifiable suicides prove
>that the eleventh was justified?
Why do you pathologically reduce all discussion to a set of
intellectually impoverished logical inferences? Go watch the film and
then get back to us. (Again, the issue was about >why< there is a need
in the culture for such films to embrace suicidal escape).
>> >> >It's a ghost story, Peter. A ghost story with heaven tacked on. It
>> >> >isn't tragedy. It isn't realism. It's just a lot of emotional goo.
>>
>> You have a problem with ghost stories, then. [You]Didn't like The Shining,
>> then,
>
>Yet again (for a third time), Padraig, you are putting words in my
>mouth. Because I don't like a particular ghost-story ending tacked
>onto an up-to-that-point serious plot, you conclude that I "have a
>problem with ghost stories," meaning that I dislike ALL ghost stories.
Yet another retreat into an evasive logical cul-de-sac. You do have a
problem with ghost stories, as repeatedly broadcast by your posts.
> Here you are again generalizing from one example, in effect claiming
>that one black Newfoundland proves that all Newfoundlands are black.
I think we'll have to conjure up a new term for your form of, er,
"reasoning evaluation". Let's call it The Wheat Test : any statement
or assertion in any discussion whatsoever with Mr Wheat which cannot
be validly universally generalised (particularly in the case of
Newfoundland black dogs) is inadmissable. No doubt, Mr Wheat is exempt
from this rigorous test.
>
>If you read the next paragraph of the post you are replying to, you
>will find where I say that some ghost stories are enjoyable and that I
>particularly liked Ghost.
That says more about your aesthetically juvenile taste than it does
about your contempt for serious "ghost stories".
>I add the following quip: "How could I help
>enjoying a film with a hero named Sam Wheat?"
Is that what you call a quip? Sorry, have to invoke The Wheat Test
here: you are again generalizing from one example, in effect claiming
that enjoying one film with a hero named Sam Wheat proves that you
would enjoy all films with a hero named Sam Wheat. Sorry, Mr Quip Wit,
that's inadmissible, shoddy reasoning. You've failed your own test.
> I also liked The Ghost
>and Mrs. Muir and Blithe Spirit.
So you're a masochist to boot, or you just have the film sensibility
of an eight-year-old child?
>And, though I'm not a fan of Shakespeare,
Um, but you liked Ghost? Oh dear. Shakespeare not scientific enough,
not puzzle-solving obsessed enough, not sufficiently emotionally
infantile?
>I think his ghosts serve their purpose extremely well.
>So tell me, Padraig, what sort of twisted reasoning led you to your
>absurd conclusion that my rejection of Soderbergh's ending implied
>that that rejection was based on the premise that ALL ghost stories
>are bad?
Back to The Wheat Test (isn't this fun, as eight-year-old logicians
like yourself would say?): Soderbergh ghost story bad => all ghost
stories bad :-( ... ("Me love you long time, me give you everything,
everything!! => Me love everyone long time, me give everyone
everything, everyone Everything!!").
>
>> >Well, you may be overlooking a few problems with this particular ghost
>> >story. First, the ghost story portion of Solaris is not a highly
>> >literary, Shakespearean-level ghost story; it is a pandering,
>> >Hollywood style ghost story with the same level of sophistication of
>> >the schmaltzy film Ghost. (I'm not saying I didn't enjoy Ghost: how
>> >could I help enjoying a film with a hero named Sam Wheat?) Second,
>> >the ghost story in Solaris is an incongruous fantasy ending tacked
>> >onto a previously serious (if boring) story. The ghost story ending
>> >corrupts the serious story that preceded it. Third, the ghost story
>> >is used here for a base purpose: to glorify suicide.
>
>> But it would be an okay purpose if it romanticised and glorified the
>> cause of "serious" technocratic science instead? :-)
>
>And now for a fourth time you are putting words in my mouth.
Hardly, you repeatedly broadcast dehumanising technocratic values in
your narrow-minded, one-note paddington-puzzle posts (you even just
stated that Lem's novel would be better if it solved the "puzzle" of
Solaris, cluelessly missing the whole point of the novel, just as you
missed the whole point of 2001).
Padraig
Padraig L Henry
wrote:
>ptca...@yahoo.com (PT Caffey) wrote in message news:<84498e9.02120...@posting.google.com>...
>
>> Yes, and James Stewart should have just calmed down a gosh darn
>> minute, forgotten all about Madeleine, and considered his professional
>> obligations to his employer--the gold standard by which all imaginary
>> people are measured.
>
>LOL!
Yes, and I'm not sure what Mr Wheat would have made of Alex in ACO
(given that he hasn't seen the film); no doubt he would have been
rooting for the Ludovico doctors and Alex's "professional obligations"
to his new "employers" ... ditto for Jack Torrance's "signed contract"
obligations to his spectral employers in The Shining.
>
>On a serious note, it is very interesting to compare Vertigo with
>Solaris: the same, inevitably failed, quest for a lost (never
>present?) object of love, the same torment of encountering someone/
>something that is not-not your loved one; but I suppose this all so
>much 'emotional goo.'
>:-)
A former poster here, director Keith Gordon, also touched on this
theme, but with a different twist, in his 1998/99 film, Waking The
Dead.
Padraig
.... someone should send Wheat some empathy and a bottle of superglue
for Christmas.
Padraig L Henry
wrote:
>lenw...@earthlink.net (Leonard F. Wheat) wrote
>
>> Lem's Solaris is
>> about anthropocentric conceptions OF ALIEN LIFE existing elsewhere in
>> the cosmos. He's saying that our inability to analyze alien life in
>> nonanthropocentric terms dooms to failure our attempts to comprehend
>> it.
But for Tarkovsky, its not just restricted to conceptions of "alien
life" (a sf metaphysic), but to the entire cosmos, life and all. He
goes much further than Lem, arguing that disinterested, territorial
science's anthropocentric, positivist tool-kit "dooms to failure our
attempts to comprehend" the cosmos and everything in it..
(Surprisingly, a variation on a wise and ancient Indian belief: the
earth does not belong to us; we belong to it).
>
>Yes, that's a given. No-one is contesting that.
>>What is essential is that, as you say, Tarkovsky has no
>> interest in Lem's theme that concerns contact with alien beings.
Why exclusively concern oneself with making contact with non-existant
alien beings when one has not yet even learned how to make contact
with the existing alien cosmos? Yet another - anthropocentric and
territorial - distancing tactic?
Padraig
... I want an anthropocountercentric alien for Christmas, Santa.
Gordon Dahlquist
On Sat, 7 Dec 2002, Leonard F. Wheat wrote:
> and I'm sure that Soderbergh thought he was presenting something
> uplifting. He was romanticizing suicide, and that was his intention.
> His ending had happiness written all over it.
what a crock of shit. after vocalizing doubts specifically about the
"truth" of his own memories - and thus of the duplicate rheyas - versus
the "true" experience of his wife, an admission that undercuts any attempt
at finding "objective" perspective as well as intimacy/faith with the
memory of the original rheya, we then see kelvin choose this non-real,
non-accurate, potential instead of "simple" lonliness and despair. the
idea that sodergergh is romanticizing suicide seems to utterly miss the
point of the ending. further, whose suicide are you talking about -
kelvin's? does he die? do you know this? is he placed - like the little
patch of land in tarkovsky - in a kind of bell jar of his old apartment?
it seems to me that soderbergh is making a conscious nod to 2001 here, and
that there's genuine ambiguity about what happens, and who exactly is in
the room at the end. all of which is far from romantic.
Wordsmith
If that list doesn't include Richard Brautigan's *Willard and His
Bowling Trophies*, then it ain't worth squat!
Snobsmith :)
David Kirkpatrick
Unfortunately, Seymour-Smith said it got edged out by the Old Testament.
Maybe in an expanded Top 200 edition...
S'moresmith :(
mark de rozario
>
> > > Kelvin's gradual
> > > recognition of the depth of his love for Hari cleanses his soul and
> > > gives him concomitant recognition of the depth of his love for his
> > > father and for existence (represented by natural beauty--the water,
> > > the horses, the trees, the rural tranquility, etc.).
>
> > This only works if we accept that water, horses, trees etc are lame
> > 'symbols' of interior states, with one assignable meaning. As dutch
> > has pointed out, Tarkovsky despaired at the 'symbolic' interpretations
> > of his work. Why do animals and landscapes have to 'represent'
> > something beyond themselves?
>
> You are much too quick to dismiss the possibility of recognizing
> symbols. Surely you realize that some filmmakers do use symbols.
Yes, but I'm not sure Tarkovsky is one of them....
>One
> of the more obvious examples is Kubrick's use in 2001 of the name
> Bowman for the character who symbolizes Odysseus in Kubrick's Odysseus
> allegory. Odysseus was a bowman, an archer, who used his Great Bow to
> slay his wife's suitors. Again in 2001, Hal's red eye is the eye of
> the cyclops; Hal is the cyclops. And so on.
I know this is re-opening old AMK wounds, but these are not symbols.
They are allusions.
>
> A filmmaker who uses symbols isn't doing it for the exercise. He
> hopes that some of the more perceptive viewers will pick them up and
> get the point.
Why? This is like art as cryptography....
>The symbols are designed to be recognized, not by
> everyone (that would require that they be to blatant) but at least by
> a few who succeed in getting the message. My point: symbols CAN be
> recognized--even in some cases where the person recognizing the symbol
> can't interpret it.
So they are like a kind of elite crossword puzzle? A kind of in-joke
for the knowing?
> In the prologue to Tarkovsky's Solaris, I saw two widely separated
> shots of a horse, fairly close up. The horse had nothing to do with
> the story. I knew it had to be symbolic.
This isn't good reasoning. Just because something has 'nothing to do
with the story' doesn't automatically mean it is symbolic.
Most of what happens in Tarkovsky's films has nothing to do with the
story. There are many things Tarkovsky can be accused of, but being
obsessed with keeping the story moving is not one of them. A
masterpiece like Mirror barely has any story at all, for instance.
Tarkovsky is not primarily interested in storytelling but ,in his
own phrase, 'sculpting in time'. The story is the grid or framework
around which the time-sculpture is constructed. Tarkovsky's
time-sculptures are what Deleuze-Guattari, after Dun Scotus, call
'haecceities': singularities composed of animals, climates, affects.
A haecceity is a nonsubjectified individuality: the individuality of a
_time_.
Tarkovsky's films lure us out of the chronic tic-time of everyday
busy-ness (where what happens next is the sole agitating imperative)
into the 'nonpulsed time' of the haecceity, in which time distends,
thickens; our time-sense recalibrated, instead of rushing on, we ache
to linger. So often in Tarkovsky, nothing happens. Or rather nothing
happens narratively. But in refusing to yield to the crude urgencies
of the everyday, Tarkovsky's camera reveals that everything - the
dripping and flow of water, the gentle breath of the wind - is already
an event. When we are drawn into the Tarkovsky-trance, our organism's
hunger for overstimulus circumvented, our pulse slackened, the shots -
so slow and drawn-out by 'normal' standards - can seem tantalisingly
quick. So the point is to draw us away from the 'story' into the
teeming multiplicity of events that we habitually overlook.
Deleuze-Guattari's clarification of the concept of a haecceity is
strikingly relevant to Tarkovsky and his treatment of Nature. 'It
should not be thought that a haecceity consists solely of a decor or
backdrop that situates subjects, or of appendages that hold things and
people to the ground ... It is the wolf itself, and the horse, and the
child, that cease to become subjects to become events, in assemblages
that are inseparable from an hour, a season, an atmosphere, an air, a
life.' ('Becoming-Intense, Becoming-Animal, Becoming-Imperceptible', A
Thousand Plateaus, 262) Tarkovsky is a genius at constructing these
haecceities, these utterly unique assemblages in which everything -
the flora, the fauna, the weather - produces affects and is affected.
The horse's role is as a component in the assemblage, not as a symbol.
> But I didn't have the
> faintest idea what it symbolized.
That's because it isn't symbolizing anything....
>Much later, after writing my own
> review of Solaris, I read Cummings' review. There I learned about
> Tarkovsky's penchant for depicting the beauty of nature. Cummings
> specifically mentioned water, horses, trees, and some other things. I
> accept Cummings' interpretation because the horse plainly is symbolic.
> I had thought it was a specific symbol, but Cummings points out that
> it is part of a SET of symbols that collectively depict something. My
> point, again, is that some symbols can be recognized as such even when
> they can't be interpreted.
I don't see how the horses etc "symbolize" Nature. They _are_ Nature.
At best, they are metonyms.
>
> Later in Tarkovsky's prologue, Berton returns from Kelvin senior's
> cottage to Moscow. This is a long, drawn out trip in an automobile.
> The trip first takes us through tunnels and then over elevated
> freeways. That trip is just as obviously symbolic as Bowman's trip
> through the tunnel of lights is in 2000. But whereas I know what
> Bowman's trip symbolizes (several things), I have no idea what
> Berton's trip symbolizes. Still, there is absolutely no doubt that it
> is symbolic. Otherwise it wouldn't be there. From the story
> standpoint, Berton's trip to Moscow need not be shown. Much less does
> it have to be dragged out for so long. Berton is a minor character,
> and all he has to do is say he is leaving and then leave. His journey
> is shown, in detail, because Tarkovsky wanted to symbolize something?
> My point: you can recognize some symbols as symbols without being able
> to interpret them. They ARE there, and they DO have meaning. (If
> anyone can interpret this symbolism, I'd like to hear the
> interpretation.)
See my comments on haecceities above. I'm going to sound like dutch
now, but I'm not sure that these scenes do _mean_ anything, any more
than a rainstorm, or a swarm of bees _mean_ something.
>
> Earlier in the prologue, Berton arrives at the farm with a boy in tow.
> The boy seems to be his grandson. Berton asks Kelvin senior (Kris'
> father) if Berton can leave the boy on the farm for a few days.
> What's this all about? From a story standpoint, both the boy and the
> request are gratuitous. They have nothing to do with the plot. Some
> sort of symbolism is at work here. You can recognize the symbolism
> without being able to interpret it.
Again, see my remarks on Tarkovsky and story. BTW, call me a logical
positivist, but isn't your position unfalsifiable? What would refute
it, let alone verify it?
>
> On to the planet Solaris. Kris has a dream in which the mother of his
> youth (the young mother we saw earlier in a home movie make when Kris
> was a boy of about 7) comes to him. She asks, "How did you get like
> this?" Then she pulls up his sleeve. His arm is covered with soot.
> Mama washes away the soot, and then Kris wakes up. The soot and the
> cleansing are still more symbolism, and this time the meaning is
> clear. Kris has been cleansed, at least partially, of some of the
> figurative demons (the soot) that are tormenting him and affecting his
> behavior.
I should have thought the demons, at least, were more than
figurative...
> I'll give just one more example. In the ending, Kris approaches his
> father's cottage and peers in the window. It is raining. It also
> rained in the prologue, but in the prologue the rain did not leak
> through the cottage roof. Now, however, Kris sees rainwater coming
> down through a leak in the roof onto his father. Then the father sees
> Kris and comes out. Kris drops to his knees and grasps his father.
> The sun comes out. Can't you see that the rain and the sun are
> symbolic?
No.
>Tarkovsky is no longer being subtle:
Or is it your interpretation of Tarkovsky which is 'no longer subtle'?
>this is blatant
> symbolism. And this time it is easy to interpret. The rain
> symbolizes the father's gloomy state of mind; the gloom results from
> his estrangement from Kris. We needn't quibble about whether "gloom"
> is precisely the right word; you certainly get the general picture.
How could I miss a 'general picture' this join-the-dots simple?
>
> Tarkovsky DOES use symbols, and many of them CAN be recognized. If
> Tarkovsky "despaired" at some symbolic interpretations of his work, I
> suspect it was because (a) his symbols were being misinterpreted by
> many viewers and (b) nonsymbolic elements in his films were being
> misread as symbolic. Any such mistakes of interpretation do not,
> however, belie the presence of symbols.
>
> > > Tarkovsky
> > > clearly intended to show that Kelvin was healed, that his soul was
> > > cleansed. And that implies that Tarkovsky wanted to show Kelvin
> > > achieving reconciliation with his father. Imperfections in
> > > Tarkovsky's ending certainly diluted the message, but Tarkovsky's
> > > intent is plain enough.
> >
> > It's still not clear to me how you are determining this alleged
> > intention. Apparently, your account of his intention is gleaned solely
> > from what is on the screen. Yet the ending is also onscreen. So your
> > version of what his intentions are has to arbitrarily subtract one of
> > the most important elements [the ending] of the film. On what grounds is this
> > subtraction made?
>
> My interpretation of the cleansing does not ignore ("subtract") the
> film's ending. On the contrary, it depends on the ending. Kris's act
> of embracing his father is the proof that he has been cleansed of his
> sense of, or desire for, alienation from his father.
Yet you have said that the film is 'about' the healing power of love.
And you've said that the ending does not adequately represent this
theme. So the ending must have failed to achieve Tarkovsky's
intention. What I am asking is why you don't attribute a more complex
intention to Tarkovsky, one that wouldn't require treating the ending
as a failure.
Note also that the ending that is at issue is not the scene of Kris
embracing his father, but the camera pulling away to reveal that this
is taking place on Solaris.
>But you are
> right about one thing: my account "IS gleaned solely from what is on
> the screen." What's wrong with that?
Nothing. Quite the contrary. I just think an odd logic always takes
hold whenever interpreters point to something offscreen/ in the text
(an artist's 'intention') using only the evidence of what is onscreen/
outside the text. Poststructuralists have had fun with this stuff for
years.
>
> > > How can you deny or even question the idea that natural beauty is a
> > > human value?
>
> > Quite easily. I agree that the appreciation of natural beauty might be
> > a human value.
>
> Well, then, you don't deny that natural beauty is a human value.
I can. There is one sense in which natural 'beauty' has to be a human
value: beauty is in the eye of the human beholder and all that. But
there is another sense in which Nature is fabulously, exorbitantly
nonhuman. Contra Berkeley, Nature is there whether human beings
perceive it or not.
>
> > But this is not the role 'natural beauty' plays in
> > Tarkovsky's films. It is even questionable whether 'beauty' is what
> > Tarkovsky shows.
>
> There is an element of truth in what you say,
why thank _you_ :-)
> but you are basically
> wrong.
Oh, :-(
>I can't comment on Tarkovsky films other than Solaris, but in
> Solaris beauty IS being shown. Beauty per se, however, is probably
> not what Tarkovsky wants to symbolize. My impression is that beauty
> itself is a symbol. We have two-stage symbolism here. The water, the
> trees, the horses, dogs, the bucolic atmosphere in general--these
> things symbolize beauty.
I prefer, as you have seen, to regard them as components of an
assemblage.
>Beauty, in turn, symbolizes a state of
> happiness or contentment, the absence of alienation.
Certain affects are part of haecceities. They are not symbolized or
represented by them.
>That happiness
> is about to turn to gloom. It starts to rain.
Rain is such a persistent feature in Tarkovsky's films, as I said
before. He's not making a children's programme, where rain=gloom.
> > > Besides, Lem's unhappiness with Tarkovsky's film did not
> > > rest on the idea that Tarkovsky championed the particular human value
> > > of natural beauty. Lem was concerned with, and was objecting to, a
> > > different human value--anthropocentric thinking.
> >
> > Yes, and I think Tarkovsky was also opposed to anthropocentrism, but
> > in a different way.
>
> I don't think Tarkovsky gave a damn about anthropocentrism one way or
> the other. His interests were in other areas.
>
> > > > Tarkovsky's whole career is a critique of
> > > > anthropocentrism. As Cummings points out, Tarkovsky's 'trademark
> > > > images' are 'water, trees, horses, dogs, rural settings', in other
> > > > words, matter, animals and landscapes: the cosmos.
>
> You're not making any sense. The "natural beauty" examples you cite
> have nothing to do with anthropocentrism.
Yes, that's why I cited them. I'm _opposing_ Nature to
anthropocentrism. Nature is what displaces man from centre stage.
Attuning to Nature/ the cosmos is becoming-inhuman.
Neither are they the
> "cosmos" that Lem was dealing with in Solaris.
They are not the cosmos Lem said he was dealing with, no.
>And even if natural
> beauty did represent either anthropocentrism or the cosmos, Tarkovsky
> is not objecting to natural beauty.
????????????? Who said he was?
>He seems to love it. In other
> words, he is a normal human being.
Well, I think that Tarkovsky's point is that 'normal human beings' are
all too often indifferent to Nature.
dutch_angle
> that there's genuine ambiguity about what happens, and who exactly is in
> the room at the end.
Making "conscious" nods to other works is Soderbergh's real talent.
His nod to 2001 is even worse than the feeling of romanticizing
suicide; thanks for noticing that.
So much for "genuine ambiguity".
> all of which is far from romantic.
Indeed.
It's just bad filmmaking. A chameleon's ambiguity.
d.a.
Leonard F. Wheat
> Your simplistic, ego-based, opportunistic "analysis" of suicide here
> seems to be more informed by the atomistic presuppositions of
> classical-imperialist economic dogma than . . .
Your trenchant, penetrating, eminently logical analysis carries a
grain of truth but is badly flawed in certain details. The truth, and
I'll try to express this in words you can understand, is that my views
are informed by reactionary, capitalist-imperialist, sludgemongering
dogma.
> >Hitler, faced with a choice between death at the hands of the Russians
> >or death by his own hand, was not emotionally immature in his decision
> >to commit suicide.
> Charming. Hitler, a well-documented manic sociopath, a shining example
> of emotional maturity!
Ah, me. Some people do have difficulty grasping subtleties, such as
the distinction between an act and a person. Call Hitler a shining
example of emotional maturity if you must, Padraig, but don't expect
many people to agree with you.
dutch_angle
> minute, forgotten all about Madeleine, and considered his professional
> obligations to his employer--the gold standard by which all imaginary
> people are measured.
Or rather: no, actually Soderbergh should have filmed (and written) a
screenplay as good as Vertigo, or develop his cinematic language in
the personal original way Hitchcock did.
Soderbergh belongs to the imaginary.
That's how one measures a chameleon.
Not quite the gold standard.
d.a.
dutch_angle
> Solaris: the same, inevitably failed, quest for a lost (never
> present?) object of love, the same torment of encountering someone/
> something that is not-not your loved one
Absolutely.
Soderbergh knows how to copy art.
d.a.
dutch_angle
> .... someone should send Wheat some empathy and a bottle of superglue
> for Christmas.
And a book on Han Vermeegeren would quite represent your taste, I suppose.
d.a.
dutch_angle
> of an eight-year-old child?
A question by someone with the overall sensibility of an eight-year-old child.
d.a.
Peter Tonguette
Yes, "Vertigo" >was< the first work of art to deal with an object of love
restored in the form of someone/something else, wasn't it? I mean, jesus.
Leonard F. Wheat
> On 8 Dec 2002 13:10:35 -0800, lenw...@earthlink.net (Leonard F.
> Wheat) wrote:
>
> >phe...@iol.ie (Padraig L Henry) wrote in message news:<3df34549...@news.iol.ie>...
> >> On 7 Dec 2002 19:22:41 -0800, lenw...@earthlink.net (Leonard F.
> >> Wheat) wrote:
After reading your post, I can see why you prefer a more permissive
description of emotional maturity.
dutch_angle
> depression, or despair. In these emotional situations, emotional
> maturity reveals itself in the ability to control one's emotions, just
> as one would control one's temper when anger generates the impulse to
> lash out physically or verbally. Emotional maturity enables one to
> behave rationally and to keep one's overt acts (but not necessarily
> one's feelings) under control. Acting rationally means rejecting
> suicide in situations where it would accomplish nothing and where a
> person with foresight can see that rejection will be a source of
> thankfulness in the future. From another standpoint, emotional
> maturity is the ability to control impulsive behavior. (If I were
> writing a textbook on psychology, I'd put a lot more thought and care
> into expressing my ideas here, but this is the best I can do offhand.)
And could you also try to be as specific (offhand) about how you think
Soderbergh glorified suicide (and who's suicide). I'm curious to know.
Somehow "glorifying suicide" sounds exactly like Soderbergh's
sillyness with his development of this film, yet I think there's more
to it. I think Soderbergh just isn't up to his task of really
developing these kind of themes.
To me, it's even worse; Soderbergh is glorifying himself, as an
artist; the artist that he simply isn't. Horrible.
>
> Note that I don't say all suicide reflects emotional immaturity. In
> situations where one form of death, suicide, is the only alternative
> to a more disagreeable form of death, suicide can be a mature,
> rational act. I support those who, faced with slow, painful deaths
> from cancer or other ailments, take their lives under Oregon's
> assisted suicide law. A man who has just killed his wife and children
> in a fit of rage and knows he cannot escape capture and eventual
> execution is certainly behaving rationally when he commits suicide.
> Hitler, faced with a choice between death at the hands of the Russians
> or death by his own hand, was not emotionally immature in his decision
> to commit suicide.
Again, how would you link these/your thoughts on this, to Soderbergh's
Solaris?
>
> > and how you think the film should have ended.
>
> How the film should end depends on the course it takes in reaching the
> end. Unlike Tarkovsky, Soderbergh had nothing to say, so I'm not sure
> that a satisfactory ending--an ending that said something--could be
> developed from the Soderbergh course of events.
Exactly, because that is the real mistake.
It makes me think that he doesn't glorify suicide, but that he
glorifies himself.
A worse-case scenario of a limited director.
> In the abstract, I
> would have liked to have seen the film follow more of a science
> fiction course, somewhat along Lem's line of solving a scientific
> mystery but without Lem's idea that the mystery is unsolvable. Some
> ultimate finding, insight, accident, or event would then lead to
> resolution of the central problem.
Basicly, yes. And not the compromise,
pseudo-intellectual-artistic-tragic ending that his film expresses
now.
>
> But if Soderbergh felt compelled to treat Solaris as a love story in a
> science fiction setting, the best ending would be one that lets
> insights gained by Kelvin through his encounter with Rheya help him
> overcome problems back on earth. For example--this is just an
> example--he might have remarried and found himself with similar
> problems with the wife back on earth. Rheya's "ghost" could help him
> see how to treat his new wife.
Wouldn't be my kind of film, but it might be one that Soderbergh could
tackle...
> In any case--whatever the plot
> line--Kelvin's return to earth should be explicit or implicit. No
> suicide, no ghosts, no metaphorical heaven.
This redo-quicky got exactly what it was asking for: the compromise.
>
> > Btw, Soderbergh should have casted Leslie Nielsen, instead of
> > Clooney; at least then he was close to a great parody, who knows.
>
> Not a bad idea, in case you're talking about the young Leslie Nielson
> who starred in Forbidden Planet. After all, the "monster from the id"
> that he originally defeated on an alien planet wasn't a whole lot
> different from (except in personality) the one Kelvin encounters on an
> alien planet.
And Forbidden Planet is a far better film...
It has some integrity.
>
> But maybe you had in mind the older Leslie Nielson of slapstick
> satire. I think today's Nielson would be ideal for the closing
> scenes, but you'd have to find some way to rationalize the change of
> appearance. Perhaps, deep in Kelvin's id, there is a desire to look
> like Nielson. Solaris grasps this desire and puts a new face on the
> new Kelvin.
I think Clooney's Kelvin could certainly need a little of that
Nielsen-touch.
I certainly would have bought the dvd and the director's cut.
d.a.